LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.; 

[4; 




i\ 



II UNITED STATES OFmSrcJ. 



CHRISTIAN TRUTH 



MODERN OPINION. 



SEVEIT SEEMOKS 



PREACHED IN NEW-YORK BY 



CLERGYMEN OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



^COFYR!GKT'f:N\ 
S 1674 y-] 



NEW- YORK 
2 Bible House, 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, 

By THOMAS WIIITTAKER, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



PEEFAOE. 



The following Course of Sermons was given the 
last winter, nnder the auspices of an association of 
clergymen in the Episcopal Church. There will 
be found such an order in the topics, and such es- 
sential agreement in the line of Christian thought, 
as to give them place in one volume ; yet €ach au- 
thor has freely written his own convictions, and is 
alone responsible for his sermon. It is hoped that 
the publication may do somewhat toward that har- 
mony of Christian faith with science, which is no 
dream, but one of the most real aims of all scholars 
in our one-sided time. 

New- York, October 1st, 1874. 



GOE"TEETS. 



-♦ »- 



The Christian Doctrine of Providence. By C. Sj 

Henry, D.D 9 

The Christian Doctrine of Prayer. By Hugh Miller 

Thompson, D.D 43 

Moral Responsibility and Physical Law. By E. A. 

Washburn, D. D 69 

The Relation of Miracles to the Christian Faith. 

By J/ H. Rylance, D. D 101 

The Oneness of Scripture. By William R. Hunting- 
ton, D.D ..^ 137 

Immortality. By Rt. Rev. T;^M: Clark, D.D., LL.D 163 

Evolution and a Personal Creator. By John Cotton 
Smith, D.D 189 



THE 

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 



C. S. HENEY, D.D., 

Delivered in Calvary Church, New-York. 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 



*' The Lord liatli prepared His tlirone in the lieavens ; and 
His kingdom ruleth. over all." — Psal:m 103 : 19. 

My Beethken : Tlie Christian idea of Frovidence 
lias its ground in the Christian idea of God as an in- 
finite, self-existent, spiritual Being — personal, intel- 
ligent, and free — distinct from Nature, before Na- 
ture, and above ISTature. 

There are three distinct conceptions of the Divine 
Activity which rest in this ground — namely, God as 
Creator, God as Upholder, and God as Orderer. 

These three conceptions hold inwardly together ; 
but the latter is the special conception of Divine 
Providence — God as Orderer. 

The Christian idea is that the same power which 
created and which upholds the universe is the ulti- 
mate cause of all the changes, all the events that 
come to pass in the universe ; that His supreme 
will is eternally active in the ordering of every 
thing ; that nothing comes by chance, nothing by 



10 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

any fatality or necessity outside of God ; that the 
history of the nniverse is one great eternal drama, 
of which God is at once the Poet and the Manager, 
and which is for ever unfolding itself under His all- 
seeing eye, His ever-watchful suj)erintendence, and 
His supreme control. 

This is the Christian idea of God's Providence. 

Atheism subverts this idea by denying its ground 
in the being of God. If there be no God, there 
can, of course, be no Providence. This every one 
sees at once. But the converse of this — ^that if 
there be no Providence, there can be no God in any 
proper sense of the word — is not at once so clearly 
seen. Yet it is equally true. 

II. I do not propose to go into a confutation 
of atheism. For the special purpose of this dis- 
course, it would be a needless taking up of time. 
I speak now only to such as, along with myself, 
believe that there is a Living Personal God, the 
Creator of the universe. I assume the existence 
of such a God as the rational basis for the Chris- 
tian doctrine of Providence. 

And I say at the outset, that the notions of 
those wlio admit the existence of such a God, and 
yet deny the Christian representation of God's ever- 
active superintendence^ direction, and control of the 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 11 

whole course of events in tlie universe, seem to me 
quite as incompatible witli any satisfactory rational 
explanation of the universe as the naked atheism 
which says there is no God at all, or the pantheistic 
materialism which identifies God with the universe 
— making Him an impersonal, dead God-no-God. 
In effect, what sort of a God is one tliat creates a 
universe over which He does not exert a constant, 
all-ordering control ? Is the idea of such a God 
really any better than the old Stoic idea of Fate ? 
Is the contemplation of such a God at all satisfac- 
tory to the demands of the human reason, or to the 
wants of the human heart ? This I am sure no one 
can maintain. And-I am equally sure that the con- 
ception of a universe perpetually watched over, 
cared for, and controlled by the infinite power, in- 
telligence, wisdom, and love of a Living Personal 
God, is the only one that completely satisfies the 
needs of the human reason and of the human heart. 

III. But it is objected that it is difficult and 
even impossible to harmonize such a conception 
with what is taken to be a pre-established course 
of things, and particularly with what are called the 
Laws of Nature. 

But laws can not establish themselves, can not 
execute themselves. 



12 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTKINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

What is Law ? Is it any tiling that exists by it- 
self — any thing that has its ground in itself alone ? 
'No, Law is a purely relative term. It relates to 
the idea of Force. In its highest generic concep- 
tion^ Law is an established Kule for the working of 
a Force. The laws of the universe are the rules ac- 
cording to which the forces of the universe produce 
the phenomena of the universe. The primary rela- 
tion of the laws is not to the phenomena, but to the 
forces which produce the phenomena. 

It is quite noticeable, by the way, how the phy- 
sical science of our day runs out into the assump- 
tion of forces. I do not object to this ; far other- 
wise. It is a j)erfectly legitimate assumption, 
only it is not the product of the Scientific Method 
— as that is commonly imderstood among scientific 
men — but of Philosophic Thought. It is the as- 
smnption of something that lies outside the sphere 
of Science, in the ordinary acceptation of the term 
among scientific men. But, as I hold that there is 
a sphere of truth beyond the reach of physical 
science, I can have no quarrel with those physical 
scientists for assuming the existence of something 
which their science can not scientifically demon- 
strate, only I confess myself amused when I see it 
done by some scientific men, who at the same time 
dismiss with a sneer or a jeer every thing which they 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTEINE OF PROVIDENCE. 13 

call " metapliysical/' as liaving no title to recogni- 
tion among respectable thinkers ! Why ! the very 
idea of force, which they assume and talk abont, is 
precisely one of the most purely metaphysical of all 
possible conceptions ! "What is force per se — force 
in itself ? Is it any thing phenomenal, any thing 
that manifests itself by itself to our senses, any 
thing demonstrable by scientific analysis ? No ; it 
is purely ideal ; it is something, the recognition of 
which is necessitated by the laws of tliougl\t. It 
does not alter the case to call the forces they as- 
sume mechanical, chemical, electrical, magnetic, vi- 
tal, or the like. Those epithets denote only certain 
phenomenal ingredients in a concrete conception, 
and abstracted from those epithets, the force itself 
remains a purely ideal conception. 

I myself also assume that there are forces in the 
universe — forces physical and forces spiritual. But 
these forces did not create themselves, nor estab- 
lish the laws of their action. Back of the phenom- 
ena, of wdiicli the laws are the generalized expres- 
sion, lie the forces that produce the phenomena, 
and back of these forces lies the great First Cause 
— the supreme Intelligence and Will which created 
the forces, and prescribed their laws of action. 
There is no other rational hypothesis to account 
either for what science calls the ''" Laws of Nature," 



14 THE CHEISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PIIOVIDENCE. 

or for those Laws of Mind wliicli the philosophic 
analysis of our consciousness reveals. 

] IV. But the special question is, in what rea- 
sonably conceivable way to represent to ourselves 
the ever-active, all-ordering intervention and con- 
trol of Divine Providence in the universe of Matter 
and of Mind ? The physical forces of the universe 
seem to be determined in their action by fixed, in- 
A^ariable laws ; and its spiritual forces — its moral 
agencies — are free, and can not be irresistibly de- 
termined by any external j)ower, natural or super- 
natural. How then to frame a possible, reasonable 
conception of the way or method of Divine Provi- 
dence ? 

Let us try to see whatever we may be able to see. 
Modestly and reverently, let us try to see. 

(1.) As to the Physical forces of the imiverse. 
Some philosophers have said they are nothing 
but the direct and immediate action of the Divine 
Will, and so have made short w^ork in solving the 
question of Providence in the sphere of E^ature: 
God's will is the sole force. 

I do not hold with such philosophers. I take the 
forces of ISTature to be creations of God; distinct 
from Him, and coeval with the creation of matter. 

And as to the laws of these physical forces — 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 15 

what we call the laws of Nature — we must remem- 
ber that our knowledge of them is empirical, the re- 
sult of experience and experiment. They are, you 
know, mere generalizations from an observation of 
particulars which (however extensive, and constant- 
ly enlarging with the progress of science) is neces- 
sarily limited ; and their invariableness is a mere 
assumption resting upon an induction which (how- 
ever satisfactory) is necessarily imperfect. There 
is no necessary contradiction in supposing that any 
given phenomena may be the product of other 
forces acting under other laws than those which we 
now explain them by. And the progress of science 
is every day replacing old explanations hj new 
ones. 

The forces of Is^ature being then the product of 
God's Creative "Will, and the Laws of ITature being 
the expression of His Legislative Will, they are 
under His perpetual, absolute control. 

But it is not to be thought that these laws, so re- 
l^lete in their myriads of special enactments with 
such marks of infinite intelligence and wisdom, such 
marvelous adaptations to purpose and function in 
their million-fold manifestations — it is not to be 
thought that such laws, established by such a Le- 
gislator, are liable to be capriciously repealed, sus- 
pended, or changed. 



16 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTKINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

I do not wonder that, among those who have most 
profoundly studied the laws of Nature, there are 
some who invest these laws with a sort of autocra- 
tic, regal or vice-regal sovereignty, and make them 
'immutable" in such sort that God's hands are 
self -tied, so that He can not or will not interfere in 
the sphere of ^Nature by any special immediate ex- 
ertion of supernatural power. 

But this notion is untenable. All that has any rea- 
sonable claim to be admitted is that God can not, will 
not, and does not interfere capriciously with the estab- 
lished course of Nature. It is not to be admitted 
that He can not, will not, and does not interfere 
with it in the way some men call a " violation" of 
the laws of Nature, j)rovided it seem good to Him 
to do so, for reasons known to Himself, which 
may or may not be known to us. It is absurd to 
say He can not, and impossible to demonstrate 
that He will not or does not act immediately 
and supernaturally m, among ^ and ujpon the laws 
of Nature to produce extraordinary and special 
results. 

And herein lies the sufficient rational basis for 
the belief in a miracle-working God. 

I do not now go into a particular discussion of 
the subject of the Christian Miracles. I content 
myself with signalizing its rational ground, and 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 17 

have only further to observe that, in respect to 
any and every special case of alleged miracle, the 
question is purely a question of historical evidence. 
The Duke of Argyll tells us that this ^^ seems now 
to be admitted on all hands," and Prof essor Huxley 
says, '' denying the possibility of miracles seems to 
me quite as unjustifiable as speculatiA^e atheism." 
He means rationally ^* unjustifiable." 

But what we have to consider more particularly 
is the general or ordinary method of God's constant 
intervention in Is^ature — controlling it, yet without 
miracle. 

And here it is to our purpose to observe that it is 
absurd to say, and impossible to demonstrate, that 
God can not, will not, and does not so act upon, 
manage, and control the forces of Nature as through 
their agency, and without any ^^ violation" of the 
laws of Nature, to accomplish special effects in Na- 
ture which would otherwise not have been brought 
about. 

And not only is it absurd to say God can not, 
and impossible to demonstrate that He does not 
thus act, but that, in point of fact. He does thus 
act is rendered credible by millions of facts of the 
same kind in the sphere of human action. All over 
the earth, in every age, every day and hour, human 



18 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

intelligence and liiiman will have been at work in 
controlling tlie forces and laws of I^atnre in sub- 
servience to limnan uses, combining, adjusting, and 
managing tliem, so as throngh. them to produce re- 
sults which the forces of Nature, left to themselves, 
wonld never have produced. Men have achieved 
these results, not by " violating " the laws of ITa- 
ture, but by using them. And what marvelous re- 
sults in our day ! The most tremendous forces of 
ISTature have been made obedient servants to man's 
will, and as easily controlled as the child's little 
go-cart. The steamers, that plow all waters and 
connect all lands ; the railways, that bring all 
places together ; the lightning-wires, that enable 
men to whisper to each other across continents 
and oceans; and the thousand other engines and 
machineries which the skill of man has set going 
in factories and in fields — all these are the product 
of man's wdll, working with and controlling the 
forces of nature, according to their laws. 

You see the bearing of this. If man, by his in- 
telligence and will, can thus bend the forces of ITa- 
ture to his uses, how foolish to doubt but God may 
do the like, and to an infinitely greater extent, by 
as much as His knowledge of the forces of Kature, 
and His wisdom and skill and ability to manage and 
control them, are infinitely superior to man's ! 



THE CHKISTIAiN' DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 19 

And this managing and controlling of the forces 
of Kature, so as by and through them to work out 
the good purposes of His holy will, without " violat- 
ing " the laws of Mature — this I take to be the 
reasonably possible general way of God's ordinary 
Providential agency in the Physical universe. And 
you see what a powerful support this theory derives 
from the analogy of what man's intelligence and 
will are perpetually accomplishing in Is"atm'e. 

(2.) But besides God's Providence in the Physi- 
cal universe, we have to consider also Ilis Provi- 
dence in the Spiritual universe — in the sphere of 
spiritual forces — that is to say. His action upon the 
minds and wills of His rational creatures, and in 
what way it may be reasonably conceived. 

And it is enough to say here, that the free-will of 
Unite spiritual beings, though not subject to irre- 
sistible control, like the forces of Xature, is yet 
open to the influence of motives ; and that all the 
resources of such influence are at the command of 
the infinite intelligence and will of God. 

As to human beings, whose nature is partly phy- 
sical and partly spiritual, it is obvious that the free- 
will of such beings is open to the combined influ- 
ence both of physical and of moral motives ; and 
God can so combine and order all external events 
and circumstances in the world of Xature as to 



20 THE CHIUSTIAK DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

make tlieiii fall in with and promote, or restrain 
and thwart men's outward aims and efforts. And 
He can also speak persuasively to man's inmost 
spirit — mind, heart, and w^ill— both indirectly 
through natural or through human agencies, and 
directly by immediate Divine suggestion and im- 
pression ; and, finally, it is impossible for us to set 
limits to the power He can thus exert over the wills 
of His rational creatures without violating their es- 
sential freedom. 

Such, then, summarily, is the rationale^ the rea- 
sonable way of conceiving how Divine Providence 
may act effectively, both in the Physical and in the 
Spiritual sphere ; and it affords a sufficient reasona- 
ble ground for the Christian representation of God's 
supreme, ever-active, all-ordering government of 
the universe of Matter and of Mind. 

For myself, I do not doubt the truth of the 
Christian doctrine. I accept it as a natural corol- 
lary from the idea of God as the infinite Personal 
Creator and Upholder of the universe ; and as a 
doctrine which (as I said at the outset) satisfies not 
only the needs of the human reason demanding 
some ground to stand on, but also the deepest in- 
most wants of the human heart ever crying out for 
a living God and Father. 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF FROyiDE:N"CE. 21 

Y. In tlie statement of the Cliristian doctrine 
on Providence whicli I laid down at the opening of 
this discourse, and in all that I have said in the 
progress of it, the Providential government of God 
has been represented as all-comprehending in its 
scope. 

But I wish to call your attention a little more 
particularly to this point : that God's Providence 
embraces the universe not only as a great whole, 
but in all its parts ; that it includes all the worlds 
that roll through the immensity of space — not only 
as an aggregate assemblage of countless systems 
circling round a central Throne, but each system 
and each separate w^orld and all the dwellers in 
them, not collectively only, but individually also. 

" There's not tlie smaUest star wliicli tliou beliold'st, 
But in liis motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to tlie young-eyed clierubins. " 

In every smallest star there is a song w^hich both 
ISTature and the Spirits there sing together in 
unison — ^liymning to the Maker and Orderer of all : 
" God hath prepared His seat in the heavens, and 
His kingdom ruleth over all." 

But there are those — and this is the reason why 
I have called your special attention to the point I 
have made — there are those who believe in a Divine 
Providence, but say that it relates only to the im- 



22 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

mutable essence of things as God lias made tliem ; 
that it embraces the universe as a great whole, but 
not all particular events ; that it includes humanity 
as a race, or men as nations and states, but not in- 
dividual men ; that to realize God as actually at- 
tending to and regulating all single and daily 
events, all transient phenomena and accidents, is to 
degrade Him to the level of finite beings ; that such 
representations are sheer Anthropomorphism — 
childish and heathenish, and are entirely incompa- 
tible with the majesty and perfection of His nature. 

I^ow, as to this '^ Anthropomorphism" — or mak- 
ing God like men : it is a great scare- word in some 
quarters. But I need only remind you that we 
cannot represent to ourselves God's activity except 
in some approximate way, by figured conceptions 
derived from the consciousness of our own causal 
power. 

And I deny that we thereby necessarily make 
God to be merely such an one as we ourselves are : 
on the contrary, I say that we sufiiciently arrest 
ourselves from doing so by interposing the idea of 
His infinitude. And that is enough to justify our 
w^ay of speaking of Him. It is not anthropomor- 
phism in any objectionable, childish, or lieathenisli 
sense. 

Moreover (and that shoukl be suflicient for us), 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTIIINE OF PROVIDENCE. 23 

Jesus Christ always used such anthropomorphic ex- 
pressions. They run all through the record of His 
teachings, as also of His apostles. 

I deny too that the representation of God as regu- 
lating particular events and the affairs of individuals 
is incompatible with the majesty and perfection of 
His nature. Those who say it is divest God of His 
infinitude and subject Him to finite conditions 
derived from their notions of an earthly sovereign 
— wdiicli is precisely anthropomorphic in an ab- 
surdly unjustifiable sense. 

It does not follow that what does not comport 
with the conditions or the majesty of an earthly 
monarch must necessarily be incompatible with the 
conditions or derogatory to the majesty of God. 
It may be impossible for an earthly sovereign — w^ho 
has to conduct the administration of public affairs 
in a large sphere and on great general views — to at- 
tend personally to and regulate the private affairs 
of aU his subjects individually, and derogatory to 
his dignity to attempt it. But what of that ? The 
infinite Euler — ^precisely because He is infinite — 
can at once govern the universe as a great whole, 
and at the same time attend to the particular con- 
cerns of every individual person. It costs Him 
nothing. It derogates nothing from His majesty, 
but enhances our conception of -it. Moreover, for 



24 THE CHKISTIAN DOCTRINE OF FKOVIDENCE. 

Him to do so is precisely wliat belongs to Him to 
do as the infinite, wise, and good Fatlier. 

Besides, we must remind those who object to the 
idea of God as actually attending to and regulating 
all single events, that this minute attention and re- 
gulation may have an intimate relation to the great 
plan of the Divine government of the universe as a 
whole. We have often seen what wide-reaching 
consequences seemingly unimportant events .may 
have ; and we have read of ten thousand instances 
of things as trivial as the spilling of a cup of tea on 
a lady's silk dress affecting the destiny of states 
and nations. And how can we tell, but the most 
trivial event in our life (as it may seem to us) may 
have a bearing on the whole future course of our 
existence — here and hereafter — and also upon the 
fortunes of humanity and of the universe ? There 
is a passage in De Quincey's writings that illustrates 
this truth in his grandly periodic style. Speaking 
of memorable attempts at escape, and in particular 
those of Charles I. and Louis XYI., he says : 

" But alike the madness or the providential wis- 
dom of such attempts commands our profoundest 
interest. These attempts belong to history. And 
it is in that relation that they become philosophical- 
ly so impressive. Generations through an infinite 
series are contemplated by us as silently awaiting 



THE CHRISl'IAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 25 

the turning of a sentinel round a corner, or tlie 
casual echo of a footstep. Dynasties have trepidat- 
ed on the chance of a sudden cry of an infant car- 
ried in a basket ; and the safety of empires has 
been suspended, like the descent of an avalanche, 
upon the moment earlier or the moment later of a 
cough or a sneeze. And high above all ascends 
solemnly the philosophic truth, that the least things 
and the greatest are bound together as elements 
equally essential in the mysterious universe." 

]^ow, this may not be equally true of all single 
and seemingly trivial events. We need not say or 
admit that it is. But it may be true of some such 
events. And who but God can tell which to make 
matters of special attention and regulation, and 
which to " leave to themselves," as we say ? 

But what it chiefly concerns us to do is always to 
think of God as at least as good as a wise and 
loving earthly father, who cares for his children in- 
dividually, and not merely in the lump. 

Jesus Christ always spoke of God as " our 
Father." Father! That is a word of the heart. 
Our infinite Father ! "With a Father's heart of 
love for all His spiritual children. Who concerns 
Himself with all our wants and needs in ways as 
particular and minute as would be imj)lied in the 



26 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

actual numbering of the hairs of our heads. Jesus 
bids us pray to God for things temporal as well as 
for things eternal, for material as well as for spirit- 
ual blessings, saying, '' Ask, and ye shall receive." 
Whatsoever "good things" — things good for you — 
ask, and ye shall receive. 

YI. I abstain from going into a particular dis- 
cussion of the Christian doctrine on Prayer — its 
full and exact meaning and contents, and the 
precise conditions under and within wliich it holds 
true. 

I will only remind you that the rationale of God's 
Providential action and control in the universe of 
Matter and of Mind, which I have given at some 
length in this discourse, furnishes the sufficient and 
abundant reasonable ground for the Christian faith 
in a Prayer-answering God ; and that you see it is 
both absurd to say God can not, and impossible to 
demonstrate that He does not answer prayers for 
physical as well as for spiritual blessings. 

I may add, too, that it is indispensably necessary 
to bear in mind that the question in regard to God's 
answering prayers for physical blessings turns not 
on the invariableness or immutability of the laws 
of nature, but on the relation of the power of the 
Divine Will to the forces of iiature. And you will 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 27 

remember that I have already shown how, in ten 
thousand cases, the power of man's will is per- 
petually combining and managing the forces of 
nature so as to change the order of events with- 
out disturbing the order of nature or violating its 
laws, and how absurd it is to say that God can not 
do the sarhe. 

A word or two here in reference to the pretension 
made by some " men of science" (as they call them- 
selves) to the right of subjecting the question re- 
specting the efficacy of prayer for physical bless- 
ings to a " scientific" determination. 

I object, by the way, m limine^ to the fashion in 
which our modern physicists arrogate to themselves 
exclusively or eminently the title of " men of 
science," as if there were no science but physical 
science. For myself, I believe there is another than 
a merely physical science, and a higher one. There 
is a metaphysical science as truly as there is a , 
physical science ; a science of the supernatural as 
truly as of the natural ; of the non-plienomenal as 
, truly as of the phenomenal ; of the infinite as well 
as of the finite ; a science of God, as Avell as a science 
of Nature. 

But it is idle to make the matter a mrerely verbal 
question — a question about the right use of the 
word science. Let us — in respect to the point now 



28 THE CHmSTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

before us — let us let these '^ men of science" (as 
they are fond of calling themselves, with a superior 
air), let us let them have the word in their own 
sense. 

Science, according to them, is only of tlie plieno- 
menal, the physical world. It has to do only with 
the laws of IsTatiire — laws that relate to physical 
forces— law^s that are necessary and immutable. 

But prayer relates to spiritual and supernatural 
forces, to the finite free-will of man and to the in- 
finite free-will of God. How then can their science 
determine any thing about the action of such forces ? 
Think of it. A physical determination oi a meta- 
physical relation ! Why, the pretension is absurd. 
It proceeds upon a Aaolation of the old logical 
maxim and necessary law of liunian thought — Jiete- 
Togenea non sunt comparanda — things generically 
disparate can not be brought into comparison. 
They might as rationally attempt to tell us how 
much the whiteness of snow" is whiter than the 
sweetness of sugar, or to determine the height of 
a mountain by smelling at it with their noses, or to 
weigh an imponderable essence in a pair of scales, 
or to put a mathematical proposition into a crucible 
and melt it, in order to demonstrate '^ scientifically" 
that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right 
angles. Prayer lies outside the sphere of science, 



THE CHllISTIAN DOCTKINE OF PROVIDENCE. 29 

as these " men of science" count science. This ia 
the sufBcient answer to their pretension. 

I have now done with all the leading infidel obx 
jections to the Christian doctrine of God's supreme 
all-ordering Providence in the universe of Matter 
and of Mind. 

VII. But besides infidelities of denial^ there are^ 
on the other hand, superstitions of belief. 

In regard to these, I can only say that to believe 
in the truth of God's all-ordering Providence, is one 
thing ; to apply it to the interpretation of parti- 
cular events, is another thing. Undoubtedly there 
are many rash, fanciful, erroneous, absurd, and fa- 
natical interpretations made. ISTothing, for in- 
stance, is more common than to construe special or 
extraordinary calamities, in certain cases, as Divine 
punishments. Thus^ Job's friends explained the old 
chieftain's extraordinary afiiictions as tokens of Di- 
vine retribution for secret sin. 

But our Lord rebukes this sort of unauthorized 
interpretation : " Think ye those eighteen, on whoni 
the tower of Siloam fell and slew them, were sin- 
ners above all that dwelt at Jerusalem ? I tell you 
nay." 

Undoubtedly we do right in saying the tower of 
Siloam fell because it was badly built, or some na- 



30 THE CHEISTIAN" DOCTKINE OF PEOVIDENCE. 

tiiral cause had disturbed its gravity. It would, 
doubtless, have fallen precisely at the moment it 
fell, if there had been nobody beneath. Those 
eighteen Avere there at the time, and they were 
crushed in the fall. It was a remarkable coinci- ' 
dence. God's all-foreseeing, all-disposing Provi- 
dence ordered it. 'No doubt of that. But Jesus 
says it was not because those men were enormous 
sinners. For aught that He says to the contrary, 
they may have been better men than the average of 
Jerusalem sinners. And their sinfulness, be it great 
or little, may have had nothing to do with their be- 
ing under the tower at the moment it fell, and being 
crushed to death by its fall. So far as being sin- 
ful goes, all men would be obnoxious (as Jesus inti- 
mates) to some similar catastrophe. In this case, 
God ordered the event for good reasons, known to 
Himself. He has a perfect right to cut short hu- 
man life in any way He may please, and it is not to 
be supposed as possible far Him to do injustice to 
His creatures in ordering the time or manner of 
their death. . 

God's Providence is a Providence of equal love. 
There is neither caprice, nor favoritism, nor ha- 
tred, nor dislike of individuals in it. " He maketh 
His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and send- 
eth rain upon the just and the unjust." 



THE CHRISriAX DOCTIiIXE OF PROVIDENCE. 31 

He lets the good man accommodate the bad man 
by exchanging passage-tickets with him. The bad 
man sails in the steamer of this week, and gets 
safely home ; the good man sails in the next steam- 
er, and is lost by the sinking of the ship. 

The overturned railway-train crushes to death 
the meek, unsellish Sister of Charity, bound on a 
joia*ney of mercy, while the hardened villain sitting 
close by, with his head full of schemes of crime, is 
spared. 

What is the special Divine meaning in cases like 
this ? "Who but God can tell ? We only know that 
ecpial wisdom, equal love, orders all. 

"While, therefore, we can not believe too strong- 
ly in God's all-ordering Providence, we can not 
be too careful in interpreting His special design. 
What we know not now, we shall know here- 
after; at least, I think we shall. Meantune, we 
may rest assured that He orders the destiny of 
every one of His spiritual creatures, both in this 
world and in the world beyond, for their highest 
good. 

YIII. But let us pass now to a brief considera- 
tion of God's Providential government in relation 
to humanity as a race, and to the universe as a 
whole — to the contemplation of God in history. 



32 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

As to liiiman liistory, its whole course, from the 
beginning, has been, is now, and ever will be, con- 
ducted by the Most High. Human history is not, 
indeed, like the w^orld of space, the mere product of 
the Almighty will, nor the mere product of human 
activity alone. There is a human element in it, and 
there is an element that 'is Divine. But the infinite 
Ruler presides over the busy activities of human 
freedom through generations and ages ; prepares the 
scene ; calls the actors forth in their time and turn, 
and, through their action, carries onward from age to 
age the unfolding of some great Divine plan, which 
embraces Humanity as a whole. There is, doubtless, a 
Divine idea ever realizing itself in the historical life 
of Humanity, as truly as in the life of Nature — in 
the events of human history as in the phenomena of 
the material world. The mind and hand of the Al- 
mighty, as well as the mind and hand of man, have 
been in all the fates and fortunes of the nations ; in 
the rise and fall of empires, the revolutions of dy- 
nasties, the wars and conquests, battles and sieges, 
negotiations and treaties, with which the pages of 
historical books are filled. Invisibly in and behind 
the visible procession of events, the Supreme Dis- 
poser has presided with a great purpose of His 
own. 

We must, however, remember that humanity is 



THE CHKISTIAlSr DOCTEINE OF PROVIDENCE. 33 

destined to exist in a sj)liere beyond tliis world. The 
earthly history of the human race is not a complete 
drama in itself. It is one act only. When the 
curtain drops at the end of the world, it drops but 
to rise again for another act, on another and a 
vaster stage. Christianity aimounces, and the 
deepest instincts of the human reason and of the 
human heart point to a destination beyond this 
world. 

The history of Immanity, moreover, in its largest 
view, both in this world and in the world beyond, 
enters into another and more comprehensive history 
stilly the history of the universe. Human history is 
but a part — it maybe, must be, a small part — of that 
grand Universe-drama which is to go on for ever 
unfolding in the round of eternal ages. 

Over this imfolding, the Infinite Mind presides. 
ITot without purpose does the Most High govern 
the universe ; not for nothing ; not for the mere 
sake of governing ; not for the sake of any vain- 
glorious self-display, making Himself the grand 
SeK-Showman of the universe, as some men make 
Him out to be ; but for some end worthy of an in- 
finite, wise, and good God. 

Doubt not, then, that the ITniverse-drama has its 
plan. It does not roll at random. Its great action 
is Divinely conducted in its eternal development. 



84 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE, 

The Providence of God is tlie Genius of the His- 
tory of the Universe. 

IX. "What this all-comprehending Divine pur- 
pose is, we should not dare permit ourselves to 
assert, unless Divinely taught. Still,, reason would 
reasonably suggest it to be the subjugation and 
final extinction of evil. 

Evil exists in the universe of God. We should 
.have to take for granted the Divine wisdom and 
goodness of its permission, even if we could con- 
ceive no reasonable explanation of its origin. In ten 
thousand things, the undeniable rests upon the in- 
scrutable, and whoever determines to hold nothing 
for true that is inexplicable, or rests upon an inex- 
plicable ground, will inevitably be driven to have 
less than one article to his creed. Omnia exeunt in 
mysteria — all things go out into mystery at last. 
Human science, in its higliest result, is always 
brought face to face with something it can not an- 
alyze. 

Evil exists ; but good and evil are in necessary 
opposition. And a great struggle between the 
powers of Good and the powers of Evil, conducted 
by the Most High Himself , we might not unreason- 
ably assume to be the deepest inmost sense of the 
history of the universe, and so of the history of hu- 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTKINE OF PrwOVIDEXCE. 35 

inanity. And Christianity seems to represent the 
"gathering together of all things" into a universe 
of goodness, imity, and peace, as the all-comj)re- 
Iiending end for which the Infinite Father presides 
over the great drama of the nniverse. 

Subordinate to this, or rather included in it, we 
might reasonably suppose, and are so instructed, 
that the special purpose of the Divine intervention 
in human history is the disciplinary education of the 
human race, and its advancement toward that full 
and perfect rational development w^hich man's spir- 
itual constitution makes possible, and after wliicli 
man's reason and conscience prompt him to strive. 

But our little world has been the chosen theatre 
for an intervention of Divine Providence, which, 
among all possible interventions, is singular and 
transcendent — namely, the historical appearance of 
Jesus Christ, announcing Himself as sent by the 
Infinite Father, to p'roclaim and to effect the re- 
storation of fallen humanity, and to establish " the 
kingdom of God " upon the earth. 

We know^ not why this particular method of Di- 
vine intervention was chosen, nor can we explain 
the how of its efficacious connection wuth human re- 
storation. We know that God was bound — we say 
it reverently, but we say it firmly — God was bound 
to intervene in human behalf in some way ; and we 



36 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

can understand wliat Jesus Clirist propounded as 
to the origin and object, the motive and end, of 
this particular method : God's love the motive, hu- 
man restoration the end. " So God loved the Avorld, 
that He sent His Son, that the world through Him 
might be saved." 

The historical appearance of Christ is the central 
fact in the world's history, containing in itself (we 
know not how) the j)rinciple of the union of man 
with God, by a Divine power, which, through the 
Divine Spirit, wrought in the heart of humanity in 
advance of Christ's actual coming, as it has wrought 
in the ages that have followed. 

And not only tlie principle of the unity of hu- 
manity with God, but also of the whole rational 
universe. Such, at least, may be the meaning of 
the words of one of the apostles of Jesus — 'Hliat in 
the dispensation of the fullness of time," the Infi- 
nite Father " might gather into one all things in 
Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on 
earth, even in Him." 

So much, tlien, in fine, for the comprehensive 
idea of God's Providence in the history of human- 
ity and of the universe, and its all-embracing pur- 
pose. 

And now, is not this view of a universe thus 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 37 

watched over, cared for, guarded and guided to its 
high rational end — is not this view a better one than 
the dreary spectacle of a nniverse forced through 
the ages by fatal forces — it knows not whither nor 
why — and a passive, inactive, inexorable Looker-on 
its only God ? 

"Which of the two is the truer Philosoj^hy of tlie 
History of the Universe, I leave you to say. 

X. It is a stupendous conception — God's uni. 
versal, all-ordering Providence. Yet reason de- 
mands and justifies it, and the lieart needs it. Let 
us hold it fast in the simplicity of an undoubting 
faith, even though it baffles and confounds the 
imagination in the attempt to grasp and realize it. 

I supj)ose the sight of the starry heavens, more 
commonly than any thing else, overwhelms the im- 
agination, and makes the idea of God's particular 
Providence seem almost too great, too wonderful to 
be believed. I presume we have all felt this many 
times, more strongly indeed at some than at other 
times. I remember the overwhelming impression 
made upon myself the last time my attention was 
arrested by the spectacle which a starlit night pre- 
sents. 

I had gone out of doors into the still air of a 
cloudless, moonless sky. The air was as clear as 



38 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

clear could be, and not tlie smallest bit of cloud 
flecked the sky. Tlie pure blue vault was studded 
thick with stars ; no space but seemed full of 
them — ten thousand glittering lights. I thought 
not merely of the wonderful beauty of the sight 
my eyes took in, but of the more wonderful mean- 
ing which the sight revealed to my intelligence : 
myriads of vast worlds, in tlie midst of which our 
little globe is but a floating speck ! 

And those myriads of w^orlds which I saw — I 
thought how small a part they are of those I might 
see if I should stay out all night, looking as the re- 
volving earth brought new orbs to view, successive- 
ly rising in the east. Then, too, I thought how the 
sun hides by day as many stars as tlie night reveals. 
Then, too, what myriads of other stars are visible to 
dwellers in the Southern hemisphere, w^hich I should 
see if I could put myself there now ! 

But what are all the stars visible to the naked 
liuman eye, compared with those beyond its reach ? 
The telescope brings them to view — immense 
worlds ; suns of other systems glittering in spots 
where the naked eye sees nothing but the blue 
void; and every improvement in the telescope 
brings new orbs to sight. But beyond the reach of 
my naked eye, or of any telescope man has made or 
can make, what worlds upon worlds, and systems 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 39 

upon systems, doubtless, stretch outward through 
boundless space ! Eternity and infinitude give time 
and room enough for the Great Maker to work in. 
And what limits can we assign to His work ? 

And all those worlds — have they their dwellers, 
too ? Doubtless, yes. Do you suppose our little 
globe, so filled with every form of life, even dow^n 
to organizations so mimite that it takes the strongest 
microscope to reveal them — do you suppose our lit- 
tle globe is the only abode of organic and of rational 
life ? I do not believe it. 

Thus looking and thus thinking, liow overwhelm- 
ing to the imagination becomes the conception of 
God's all-ordering Providence, embracing all those 
coimtless worlds, and all the dwellers in them ! 

And even w^hen from our little glol)e we look up 
to the starry sky, and think only of God's Provi- 
dence over man, how the words of the j^oet David 
spring to our minds, and more impressively to us 
than they could to him : " When I consider the 
heavens the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the 
stars which Thou hast made. Lord, what is man 
that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man 
that Thou visitest him." 

Yet Jesus Christ bids us believe in God's fatherly 
Providence over man. God is love. His Provi- 
dence over man is a Providence of Love. Love is 



40 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

the strongest power in the universe^ and Jesns 
Christ Himself, in His own person, is God's heart 
of Human Love to man. He it is that bidsns have 
, faith in God's infinite, fatherly tenderness. He it is 
that bids ns believe that the Father is ever leading 
"US by His own hand through the dark days and 
bright days, the sorrows and the joys of our earthly 
pilgrimage, making all things work together for our 
good. 

Let us, then, thankfully believe, firmly trust in, 
and entirely submit ourselves to the all-ordering 
Providence of the Living God, the Loving Father 
of us all. 



THE 



Christian Doctrine of Prayer. 



HUGH MILLER THOMPSOJ^, D.D., 

Rector of Christ Church, New-York. 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 



" Ai?D it came to pass as lie was praying in a certain place, 
wlien lie ceased, one of liis disciples said unto liim, Lord, 
teacli us to pray as John also tauglit liis disciples." — Luke 
11 : 1. 

There are a great many tilings to wliicli men 
object, as parts of Christianity, wliicli are not pecu- 
liarly parts of it at all. It was not necessary that 
Christianity shonld teach men to pray. Prayer is 
a natural instinct. Men have always prayed, and I 
suppose always will. The question is : How and 
to lohom shall they ju^ay ? 

In any danger or distress of body or soul, men 
have cried to some invisible power stronger than 
themselves, stronger than any thing they knew 
in the world, for deliverance. In famine, in 
plague, on the approach of enemies whom they 
were powerless to repel, nations have cried to the 
invisible powers for safety. And men, as indivi- 
duals, when pressed by sudden calamity, when sud- 
den death has stared them in the face, upon the 
midnight seas in wreck and storm, underneath any 



44 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

sudden stroke, or under conviction of overwhelm- 
ing sin, when the voice of conscience, that never 
can be silenced, spake out of the darkness and pro- 
phesied woe ; have always knelt and cried to the 
gods — the bad gods or the good gods, the gods 
snpernal or the gods infernal, but to some pow- 
ers unseen. For the conviction that back of all 
that was visible there lay something invisible, that 
behind this material w^orld, or beyond it, there lay 
an awful world of power invisible, this conviction 
has been in the heart of men from the beginning, 
and will remain in the heart of men nntil the end. 
"We need have no fear of that. "When men have 
tried all things by their ow^n power, visible or 
material, then, in their despair, they have appealed 
to the gods. " Give ns this day our daily bread," 
the Christian prays. An Indian corn dance is the 
same prayer. It differs but in object. The Indian 
corn dance, the sacrifice to Pan, were only human 
nature's dumb instincts appealing to the unseen, 
to the powers that hold humanity in the hollows 
of their mighty hands, pt)wers that could save or 
could destroy — strangely, darkly, but still appeal- 
ing. There is not, over all this fair earth, a land 
that has not been dyed with the blood of sacrifice. 
Men have gone to the gods dyed with the blood of 
beasts, and asked to be saved ; dyed with the blood 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCrRINE OF PRAYER. 45 

of men, and asked to be pardoned ; dyed with the 
blood of their first-born oJlered -to propitiate. 
The dearest thing they had they offered as their 
prayer to God. The dying groans of the victim, 
the agony of the dnmb beast, the shriek of slaugh- 
tered men, have been man's prayers to the gods 
above him. 

So, when Christ came, the word was not, " Shall 
we pray?" bnt, ''Lord, teach lis how to pray;" 
'' Teach us how to come to God ; " " Teach us how 
to approach God, and Who God is.-' 

The character of the God determines the charac- 
ter of the prayer. That was in the mind of the 
disciples and in the mind of the Lord when He 
taught them a prayer according to their request : 
" Show us God ; tell us what His nature is, and 
His name, and so shall we know how to approach 
Him acceptably, and receive good gifts at His 
hands." Prayer comes to us, therefore, as the natural 
instinct of man displaying itself on every page of 
his history ; men praying as individuals, or praying 
as communities, or praying as nations, or praying 
as churches, but still praying. There has gone 
up from the earth a ceaseless cry of lamentation 
and woe, or of thanksgiving and praise to the 
heavens above. 

In speaking to you, therefore, to-night, of the 



46 THE CHRISTIAN BOCTRIISrE OF PRAYER. 

Christian Doctrine of Prayer, I must look to prayer 
as it was taught by the Lord Himself, and as prayer 
comes to ns now, Christian men in a Christian land, 
^ who have had a Revelation of the Invisible teach- 
ing ns the nature of God, Droclaiming His Father- 
hood and man's Sonship. 

Of course, I am not to prove the existence of 
God. I am not speaking to men w^ho believe in 
the dirt philosophy ; I am not speaking, at least I 
shall not speak, to those who suppose there is noth- 
ing beyond what is visible, nothing beyond what 
is tangible, who suppose there is no ear that can 
hear, no voice that can answer, no heart that can 
feel. I speak to those who believe in God, and 
that God " Our Father," who has an ear to hear, a 
hand to save, a heart to feel. 

And from that point of view, I am met with this 
objection : " God is unchangeable : how can our 
prayers change the unchangeable ?" 

ISTow, the unchangeableness of God is of the very 
essence of our faith. Christianity, first of all, re- 
veals it. We must accept the responsibility of a 
God that changes not; that alters not nor wea- 
ries. The Unchangeable for ever and for ever is 
our God and Father. Now, how with such a God 
shall we come to pray ? We bring our petitions 
before Him ; w^e ask Him for pardon or ask Him 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTKINE OF PEAYER, 47 

for bread. We askllim for deliverance from some 
woe ; we ask Him for salvation from some bodily, 
mental, spiritual pain. God has brought it on ns — 
at least it has come by His law. He has at least 
permitted it. Do we ask Him to change ? " How 
can man's feeble words change God ?" The answer 
is : There is an entire mistake. No Christian man 
prays, expecting to change God. No prayer that 
was ever offered with the expectation that God 
would either repent or change was a Christian 
prayer. God is unchangeable. That is the very 
first thought. If God be captious, if God be change- 
able, if God be open to flattery, open to any pro- 
pitiation, open to feel lovingly toward me to-day, 
and open to hating me to-morrow, how can I pray 
to a God that veers as the winds veer, that changes as 
the tides change ? 'No, The very God we need to 
pray to is a God unchangeable. For it is not that 
I seek to change God by prayer ; but quite another 
thing, my relation toward God ; and that change 
is effected not by changing God, who is not change- 
able, but by changing myself. God was in Christ 
reconciling the world unto Himself ! 

You stand some day on a plain, and there rises 
in the distance a mountain — a single peak, let us 
say, as you can sometimes see them on our own 
|)road plains in the West. You pass a day's jour- 



48 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

iiey with tliat mountain in your siglit. At every 
hour of your journey, your relation to the moun- 
tain changes ; the mountain still stands just the 
same. You approach it on the one side, and as 
you look at it, it lifts to the blue above rugged 
peaks, splintered by the lightnings, Avorn with the 
storms, glittering underneath the sunlight, flash- 
ing in the j)allid moonbeams, daily and nightly. 
The shadow falls on you as you stand if the sun 
is beyond, and you are in the coolness. You 
pass on and around, and on another side the hot 
sun beats down upon you. You are footsore, dusty, 
thirsty, weary. On that side, no brook comes down, 
no springs flash out. It is a hard, barren w^aste. 
You go on still to another slope. The forest grows 
up, covering the shaggy sides with greenness, and 
there in the shadow of the woods the rivulets steal 
downward through the clefts to the brimming river in 
the valley, and you stoop and drink, and are refresh- 
ed. So, as you journey hour by hour, you may change 
your relation to the mountain, and at no two points 
that you occupy will the mountain be just the 
same to you. You have seen it on diff*erent sides, 
you have borne different relations to it, you have 
climbed its rocky sides, you have been cold upon 
its snowy summit, you have rested in its cool sha- 
dow, you have been protected from the storm by 



THE CHHISTIAX DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 49 

its caves. But you changed — the rooted inountain 
still remained the same. 

Or, again, the sun above om- heads, the best 
image of the unchangeable we know, the chosen 
type of the Lord Himself, sets and rises to the man. 
It never sets and never rises to itself. Yon see it to- 
day through the watery vapors of the winter-time ; 
another day, again, yon see it blazing down from 
the zenith in a hot August noon. You see it 
sink slowly to its rest at evening ; at morning, 
flaming in the eastern skies, now lurid through 
mists, now blazing in the vaporless blue. AYe 
call these changes, changes in the sun, and yet the 
great sun always, day and night, in storm or calm, 
at rising or at setting, has not changed. Yon 
change, your atmosphere changes, your little world 
changes, and the relation is changed ; but the sun 
never. 

Is"ow, to brino- a chano-e in relation between 
God and man, one of the beings being changeless, 
you must change the other. Man mnst alter the 
relation by altering himself ; and that relation is 
certainly one thing in prayer and another thing 
without it. 

Yon can reduce it, if you will, to a mathematical 
formnla. The relation between God and man, 
mimes prayer, you can represent by what figure 



50 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTEINE OF FKAYER, 

you please ; but lioweyer you choose to represent 
it, it will make no equation witli the other state- 
ment of the relation of God to man jplxis prayer, 
God remaining still the unchanged quantity in 
your calculation. God unalterable, the varying 
man varies the relation. The man with prayer 
must stand in one relation to God ; the man %oiih' 
out prayer in quite another. There is the difference. 
You may shut yourself in a cellar in June, if you 
will, and the bright sun above you shall send no 
ray down to yoii. So you may roof yourself in 
from God's grace, if you will ; but God's grace still 
descends, just the same. You may cover j^our 
garden-bed from the devv s of night if you please ; 
but the dews of night descend all the same. So, 
again, you may cover yourself from the dews of 
God's grace and blessing ; you may turn away from 
His good gifts, shut your heart to God, and yet 
God's grace goes over all the world, God's good 
gifts are everywhere given, God's pity falls like 
the sunlight. His mercy comes like the rain, His 
blessings are showered on good and ill alike. God's 
gifts fall on the unchristian, on the sinful, as the 
Lord teaches us, on the just and the unjust alike. 
The question is for the man himself. Shall he take 
or shall he refuse ; shall he cover himself from 
God's goodness, or shall he open his heart to it | 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 51 

So we pass that. It is an entire mistake to sup- 
pose that we seek to change the unchangeable 
God. 

Prayer is changing man's relations to God. But 
prayer is not only asking for what we need, which 
is the heathen idea. It is far more than that. It 
is a positive communion with God. You can not 
describe Christian prayer, as has been attempted, 
by any comparison with the cry of a dumb animal 
when seized to his death. Christian prayer is not 
the cry of wild distress, nor the last shriek from a 
man's lips as he goes down in the darkness choked 
by the foam ; nor the cry as he yields up his breath 
in battle ; nor tlie groan for mercy as the sinner 
tosses on abed of pain; a prelude, as his conscience 
prophesies, of a bed of pain for ever. Christian 
prayer is a changing of the relation, as I have de- 
scribed by a man's putting himself in a certain posi- 
tion toward God. It embraces communion, praise, 
thanksgiving, as well as prayer. It is standing 
toward God, and looking to Him as a Father and 
' a Friend. It is coming to Him, and opening the 
heart to Him, exposing all its feelings to Him, 
speaking out every difficulty, laying it fairly before 
Him, consulting Him upon it, taking Him into 
one's confidence, as you could not take your best 
friend. 



52 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

God represents Himself , as lie is, all-powerful 
and all-wise. Lord and Father, and His palace-doors 
are open day and night, and ushers have orders to 
admit through all the shining hosts into the very pre- 
sence-chamber of the King, at any hour they may 
come, those children of His that seek Him, and 
w^ho shall find Him neither occupied with business 
nor taken up with the government of the w^orld. 
They may come there and talk with God, as it were, 
as one talks to his friend and benefactor. 

That is Christian prayer. It calls out the intel- 
lect ; it calls out the affections ; it calls out the 
most strenuous exertions of the human will ; it 
calls out every powder that gives dignity to man. 

You say, '' "We see all this, and we grant the sub- 
jective use and value of prayer. You will say 
nothing more than is safe when you say that the 
man that prays must be a man wlio lives on a loftier 
plane than the man who does not pray ; that tlie 
man who is in the habit of 2:oino: to God in this 
way, and communing with Him, talking with Him, 
face to face, that he must be a nobler man, intellec- 
tually and morally, than the man that does not pray ; 
and it w^ere worth while to keep up prayer, and 
public worship, and private worship ; worth while 
to encourage men to pray, if only for this result 
in educating and elevating man." 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTKINE OF PKAYER. 53 

" But is there any thing beyond that ? Is it, after 
all, any thing more than a subjective exercise, and 
does it bring any thing more than a subjective, en- 
'' nobling, and lifting np of the soul, raising it above 
the chances and changes of life ? Is it possible for 
God really to ffive what a man asks ?" It is mani- 
fest that on the answer to that question must turn, 
after all, the whole value of prayer, because it is 
impossible that for any long period of time, one 
man, or any number of men, should keep up the 
habit of praying, going through the form of pre- 
senting petitions to a Being that can not answer. 
It is the very conviction that God does answer that 
makes the subjective effect of prayer possible. 
The elevation of the heart tliat comes from pray- 
ing comes because men believe that God hears 
prayer and answers prayer. If men did not believe 
that, they would stop praying, and the subjective 
benefit would go. We will not conceal, we ought 
not to conceal, the fact that in our day, men have 
found difficulty in believing that God hears and 
answers prayer. While they are ready to admit a 
God and a just God and a merciful God, they also 
have imagined that that God was so fettered that 
He could not answer the prayers of His creatures ; 
that, at least, one whole class of prayers are use- 
less. While we may ask Him for spiritual bless- 



54 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

ings, for forgiveness of our sins, foi strength to 
resist temptation, yet when we go beyond that and 
ask God for rain, for instance, we are asking some- 
thing which God can not supply. 

Let us exainine this. The ground of the objec- 
tion is, the Unchangeableness of Law. In our day, 
in the discoveries that w^e have made, the convic- 
tion has come, beyond what it was in any previous 
age, that the entire reahn of nature is subject to no 
caprice, to no chance, subject really to no change, 
but subject only to the strong arm of lav^. We 
have examined the paths far enough to know, and 
to feel safe in saying, that those w^hich we have not 
examined yet, the outlying reahns of Is'ature, being 
a part of N^ature, are as much under law as are those 
we have examined ; that there is not a dew-droj) 
formed and falling, not a rain-drop that descends 
upon a thirsty field, that does not come by law ; 
not a cloud, not a hazy vapor that drifts across the 
sky, but moves by law ; not a single change in tem- 
perature, in the atmosphere about us, but comes 
by law. If w^e have not found the laws yet, if we 
have not been able to tabulate and formulate and ^ 
systematize, yet, nevertheless, the law is there. 
The objection is that when we ask God for certain 
blessings of body, for rain, for instance, or for the 
gift of health, or for a prosperous voyage at sea, or 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTKIXE OF PliAYER. 55 

for deliverance from plague or storm, %De are asMng 
God to change His law, 

N^ow, as a Cliristian accepts the iincliangeableness 
of God as one basis for Prayer, so, also, must lie 
accept tlie uncliangeableness of Law as another 
basis for Prayer. If you give him a world of 
chance, a world where things go by caprices, then 
he can no more pray with any hope of being 
answered than he can pray to a capricious God. 
He must have a basis of fixed law to stand upon, 
or he can not pray. 

This other objection turns itself, as we shall find 
when we examine it, into one of the very grounds 
on which prayer stands. For what is Law ? A 
very few moments' careful thought will show any 
man that law is not a power, it is merely the 
formula by which we express the action of a pow- 
er. We see certain causes produce certain effects 
uniformly ; we say it is the law that the cause 
should be followed by the effect. We put down 
the law, we formulate it ; but the law is not the 
power. There is no povjer that we know of at all 
in l^ature ; but Avhen there is Unity of Law (and 
our Science is teaching us that very fact), that pre- 
supposes and takes for granted Unity also of Power. 
This power that acts, and acts in these ways, acts 
in a method which we tabulate and formulate, and 



56 THE CHKISTIAK DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

call law, is wliat ? AYell, Science does not know ! 
It ^iQ2^.9>^Yii\\]phenome7^a^ and can deal with nothing 
else. It deals with what you can see and handle 
and analyze. Powers escape it, and escape it 
utterly. There is no knowledge except of tlie 
things we see. Appearances, phenomena are all 
that Science deals with, and our best wisdom in 
Science has been in our modern days, to know that 
fact and accept it. In the old days, men sought to 
break through the walls of the material and get out 
into the broad ocean beyond; and instead of search- 
ing what they could, examining Avhat was in their 
hands, and discovering what was near, they went 
far reaches to discover the imdiscoverable, to com- 
prehend the incomj)rehensible, to find what can 
not be found. So, their science was limited, their 
advance was checked. ITot until 

*' The broad-browed Verulam, 
The first of those who know," 

taught men to be content with their own small- 
ness, content to sit down inside their own walls as 
humble interpreters of Nature, have we been 
able to advance in real Science, and make progress 
in genuine knowledge. That progress has been 
made by the acceptance of the fact that phenomena 
are all we can know ; the po^Der lies behind. It 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 57 

was to that power tlie heathen cried. It is to that 
power, men always instinctively cry in their last 
distress. The Christian names that power, God — 
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, 
the power that moves and rules ; and when we talk 
of law, we mean simply God's orderly working, 
that is all : the way in which God rules His great 
household, the regular order He has established for 
His worlds. The father in his house may to-day 
establish a certain set of rules : at such an hour there 
will be the inorning, at such an hour the mid-day, 
at such an hour the evening meal, at such an hour 
the child shall go to bed, at such an hour he shall 
rise, at sucli an hour he shall take his bath, at such 
an hour lie shall have his lessons. The father may 
arrange all that, and that is the Law, But the 
child would make a mistake — a mistake made some- 
times by men called philosophers — should he im- 
agine that those laws were laws for the father, 
binding the father as well as binding him ; if he 
mistake the order by w^hich the father governs his 
household for a power outside the father. Law 
sits enthroned in the bosom of God. There is Jier 
eternal home, and she expresses herself throughout 
all nature, the voice of God. The planets move 
in their mighty courses by law ; the green grass- 
blades spring up in the spring days by law ; the 



58 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRIKE OF PRAYER 

tide sweeps inward from the sea and thunders np 
the quaking sands by law. By law the constella- 
tions flame and burn ; the little firefly dances in the 
summer evening and emits his gleaming spark by 
law. Law rules everywhere, man's body and man's 
soul, and in the irxighty arms of law, man rests 
secure. We do not depreciate law ; we do not seek 
to make it at all uncertain ; we only declare it to be 
the expression of God's will — not superior to God, 
but the handmaid of God. 

Of that law, we see only a part ; we can not see 
how its enactments modify and arrange themselves. 
But even we can bring down a higher law and sus- 
pend a lower. 

There are, for instance, the laws of chemistry 
and the laws of vitality — one evidently a law of a 
higher nature, and the other of a lower. ISTow, 
whenever the two touch, the laws of vitality will 
invariably modify and sometimes suspend the laws 
of chemistry. You may, for instance, subject a 
living body to a heat which will actually destroy 
the texture of a dead body. A ma^i may sit in an 
atmosphere raised to a point Avhich Avill boil dead 
flesh, and may do it as a means of health ; it is 
done daily. Again, man by his will suspends the 
laws, as we call them, of mere matter. I never lift 
my hand without suspending the law of gravitation. 



THE CHRISTIAN POCTRINE OF PRAYER. 59 

I annihilate for the time being the law as far as my 
hand is concerned. 

We mnst recognize this fact, that there are these 
grades of law, and that the higher law when it 
impinges npon the lower either changes it bv modi- 
fication, or suspends it for the time being entirely. 
AVhen, therefore, one says God can not answer 
prayer, becanse He will break His own law in a 
particular case, he is speaking too shallow a thought. 
Take, for instance, the very matter of rain, of which 
I have spoken. It has been said that if God should 
send a shower at the request of a particular neigh- 
borhood. He could not do it without deranging the 
balance of the world, and, in consequence, the 
balance of the Universe. Well, suppose not. What 
of it ? Is it not in God's power to suspend a lower 
law, since I can do it ? I can not build a house ; I 
can not put a brick in its place in the wall ; I can 
not lift a stone into a tower ; I can not build or 
launcli a ship ; I can not fell a tree ; I can not 
drain a marsh ; I can not dig a canal : I can not 
grade a railroad ; I can not take a stone and cast it 
into the sea, without changing the ivhole halance of 
the Universe, We are doing it every day ; men are 
all the time doing it, and have been since the world 
was created. Displace one particle of matter, and 
you change the balance — not perceptibly, indeed. 



60 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

but science will tell you clearly you do. Cast a 
stone into tlie air, and tlie stone attracts the earth, 
and the earth attracts the stone ; the earth is jarred 
from its orbit by the act of casting that stone into 
the atmosphere. Boys do it at play, and it never 
occurs to them that they are in any danger whatever 
of disarranging the Universe. The very water 
that we are supplied with in this city is supplied 
by a breach of the law of fluids. Wo have deli- 
berately set to work and suspended a law as far as 
the Croton supply is concerned; we have lifted the 
water up and beyond where it belongs. 

In other words, Will itself is a law ; personal 
will is a fact that you can not leave out of account. 
God can not send showers in answer to prayer, one 
says, and yet they tell us that we can bring out 
cannon and pow^der, and bum powder enough in 
our cannon to produce a shower anywhere. After 
every great battle of modern days, where there has 
been sufficient artillery discharged, there is always 
a shower, they say. If man can bring a shower^ or a 
storm of wind and lightning and thunder and rain 
to any spot, it surely is a strange notion of God's 
sovereignty over His universe to suppose that lie 
can not do as much as we can without endangering 
His universe. 

But we will leave that and take up another ob- 



THE CIIRISTIA^^ DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. Gl 

jectioii. It lias been said tliat God could not 
answer one man's prayer without interfering with 
another man's good. For instance, two nations are 
at war ; both of them are praying for victory ; God 
can not give to one a victory without denying it to 
the other ; tlierefore it is best to suppose that 
God answers neither, but lets the case be decided 
by the most powerful artillery and the strongest 
battalions. 

I^ow, is there any real difficulty in this case ? It 
only comes, the supposed difficulty, from a misap- 
prehension of what prayer really is. !Not the ask- 
ing or demanding of something for one's self with- 
out terms, but the asking of it subject always to 
the will of the Moral Governor of the Universe- — 
that is prayer. What man asks, he asks always 
under a broad law, and that broad law of God's is 
the good of all men and of all creation. When I 
ask for rain on my land, I ask it on tlie express 
condition that God shall give it if it seems to Him 
best and wisest. "When a nation asks God for 
victory, it asks for that victory on condition that 
its cause be good, that its aims be just, that the 
preservation and safety and victory of that land 
and its armies be for the glory of God, for the 
bringing forth of His Kingdom, for the benefit of 
His Creatures, for the good of all the World. This 



62 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

is the law of prayer, as tlie Lord expressed it in 
Getlisemane, kneeling in liis agony, and praying that 
the Clip might pass from Ilim, " and yet ncjt my 
will, but thine be done." 

Another objection is, and that has been put in 
familiar shape, that there is no tangible result to 
prayer, that there never has been, and there never 
can be ; that, as a factor, producing results in the 
world, we must leave it out of the account. Tyn- 
dall's Prayer Test you will remember. He propos- 
ed to try prayer scientifically, to put two sets of sick 
people in two different wards of a hospital, and for 
one of them prescribe calomel and quinine, or what- 
soever might be necessary in the way of drugs, cmd 
prayer, to be taken regularly. In the other ward to 
prescribe calomel, quinine, and other things, and 
leave out prayer. In the end, to look over the pa- 
tients, and see whether the omission of prayer from 
the medical prescription had any effect at all on the 
cure. That is what it practically amounted to. I 
would take just here, also, the very baldest ground, 
and do that also on a scientific basis. I say that 
since the world began, men have prayed ; I say that 
is a fact, just as much a fact as that men have 
eaten or clothed themselves. From all quarters of 
this world have gone up appeals to Heaven. The 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTKINE OF PRAYER. 63 

cry is to God ; the prayer is for deliverance or safe- 
ty, from the creation until to-night. 

Now, am I, as a scientific man, to leave all that 
out, to leave out of my account and calculation one 
iixed phenomenon of human life ? Why, on the 
barest Positive Philosophy, I must take facts as they 
are ; and j^rayer is a fact, a fact of life, a persistent 
fact, a universal fact, a steady fact, always there. 
Shall I find no place for this fact ? ' Shall I say that 
the world has had no results from that, that to-day 
the world would have been what it is, had there 
been no prayer? Is that scientific, to rule out this 
great phenomenon of life, and say the result would 
have been just the same without it ? Why, on the 
baldest, barest, and merest materialism, on a cold 
scientific treatment of the subject, it would be un- 
philosophical in me to take any such ground as that. 
The world of the nineteenth century is the result of 
powers that have Avorked in the world since the 
first — powers that have disappeared sometimes, and 
phenomena that have ruled and gone ; but we must 
take them all into account to explain the world as it 
is, and we must take this. Just see how impossible 
it would be otherwise. Take the case of the sick 
people. How is it possible to take twenty sick peo- 
ple, and shut them up in the ward of a hospital out- 
side of prayer ? You may build a roof over them 



64: THE CHRISTIAN DOCTKINE OF PRAYER. 

to slielter tliem from the sun or the rain, but you 
can not roof them in from prayer. Why, I pray 
for the sick every day these Lent days ; we are 
praying in all our churches for the sick all the world 
over. Can we put in a parenthesis and say that we 
omit from our prayer those sick people on whom 
Dr. Thomson and Prof. Tyndall are trying their ex- 
periments ? All we know is, that prayer is a factor 
of human life itself, as eating, drinking, thinking, 
reading, and working are factors of human life, and 
a universal factor, from which no man can be ex- 
cluded, from whose effects you can shut in no 
man. 

But as to God's i^^ivins: us blessin2:s material in 
answer to prayer, there is this further thought to a 
man who believes in law: when he looks philoso- 
phically at the phenomenon of prayer, tlie universal 
exercise of prayer, and then sees God's blessings 
come, and how they come, sees sudden deliverances, 
sees unexpected good, sees health restored where 
all science prophesied death, sees life given when 
the feet were already on the crumbling brink of the 
grave, sees strange " chances," as we call them, 
come to men, sees wonderful deliverances wrought, 
what is his thought ? That this phenomenon of 
prayer is a part of the universal law ; that God takes 
that into account as all the rest ; that God is a God 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 65 

that will be entreated ; tliat He lias planted the in- 
stinct in the heart of man to go back to the same 
source from which he came ; that He Himself made 
prayer, when man was made, a part of man's na- 
ture and law. 

And so, looking oyer the w^orld, we can not 
tell, Is it prayer that produced this, or is it not ? 
This power is like all other powers — invisible. 
" All things," the old School-men said, " go out into 
mystery." So goes prayer. You cannot gauge it ; 
you can not measure it ; it belongs to the unseen 
forces. 

The results produced by prayer, that they exist, 
that they are strange, that they are wonderful, I 
have the philosophic right to assume. All the ex- 
pressions of power in the world seen are expressions 
of a power that lies behind, unknown, and as yet, to 
us, unapproachable, except through prayer. 

We trace to its ends the manifestation of Power, 
to the last particle or atom the manifestation of 
Force. There it escapes us, and we are lost. 

"We take, then, the Christian philosophy of exist- 
ence, that the material clothes the immaterial ; that 
the world visible is the expression only of the world 
invisible ; that the body is simply the clothing of 
the soul. As we believe in free men, we believe in 
a free God. Let us take our Lord's own words : 



66 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 

" If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to 
your children, how much more shall your Father 
which is in heaven give good gifts to them that ask 
him." 

Science confesses itself ignorant of all, save phe- 
nomena. The great deeps of Life and Power lie 
unsounded. Knowledge deals with shows, Faith 
with substances and realities. Where Science stops. 
Revelation takes us up. A Will, a Person, a Heart 
lie hehind 2^henomena, Out of the roar of thetem- 
j)est, out of the crowding evil, out of the iron clasp 
of pitiless and senseless matter, and its apparent 
power, we appeal to Wisdom, Will, and Goodness, 
and jpray, exercising "the right of petition," which 
belongs to Humanity in the way the Lord taught 
us — 

' ' For wliat are men better tlian slieep or goats, 
Wliicli nourish a blind Ufe within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer, 
Both for themselves, and those who call them friend. 
For so, the whole round earth is, every way, 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." ^ 



MOEAL EESPOITSIBILITT 



PHYSICAL LA^W. 



BY 

The Rev. E. A. WASHBURN, D.D., 

Rector of Calvary Church, New-York, 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND PHYSICAL LAW. 



'' Let no man say, when lie is tempted, I am tempted of God ; 
for God can not be tempted, neither temptetli he any man ; 
but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own 
lust and enticed/' — St. James 2 : 13, 14. 

It is the reasonable faith of Christian men, my 
friends, that while the world of natm^e and mind 
is open to onr searching, there are truths essential to 
our duty, which are planted by our Maker in the con- 
science of all, and can not be shaken by the specu- 
lative strifes of the time. Science may pry into its 
nebulous fields, but the fixed stars give their un- 
changing light. In that conviction, I have chosen 
this old question of moral responsibility, as it bears 
on certain theories of natural law, which are to-day 
put forth as the newest fruit of our research. I 
honor science, so long as it is what the master of ex- 
perimental philosophy claimed, the interpreter of 
nature, and I gladly accept all it has revealed of the 
secrets of life ; but when it so treads beyond its own 
sphere as to deny any reality above nature, and to 



70 MORAL KESPONSIBILITY 

change man into the slave of physical forces, it is 
wise for us to learn a nobler knowledge than can 
be gained by the dissecting-knif e or the microscope. 
If there be any whom I can thus help toward the 
study of their own consciences, and that Christian 
faith which is linked most closely with this moral 
truth, I shall be glad indeed. 

In this view, I offer you a sentence from the epis- 
tle of James, which gives us the guiding line of all 
Christian teaching on this subject. These words may 
have been written for Jewish converts, who clung 
to the Pharisaic dogma that suffering was the pen- 
alty of inherited sin ; or as a rebuke to some who 
excused their apostasy on the plea of irresistible 
temptation. But our apostle answers with plain 
logic that to call sin fatality is to call God its author, 
and to belie our own self-knowledge. Here, then, 
we have set before us the one only method in which 
we can study aright the problem of moral evil. 
It is in the fact of responsibility as revealed in our 
own consciences. And it is, when any class of 
thinkers has lost sight of this personal truth, and 
reasoned from purely theoretical views of the na- 
ture of God or of human life, that the system of ne- 
cessity has arisen. There are two results, to one of 
which si;ch a theory has always led. Tlie theolog- 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 71 

ical view has traced the ground of evil to the eter- 
nal decrees of God, and has made man its necessary 
inheritor, while it has contradicted itself by calling 
him responsible. The philosophic school, from the 
same starting-point, has more logically affirmed 
that there is no moral evil at all. That falsehood 
has appeared sometimes in an ideal pantheism like 
that of Spinoza ; sometimes in the guise of physical 
law. I do not linger on the more abstract systems. 
It is enough if I show you their common ground. 
Let men lose the moral fact of accountability, and 
whatever their religious faith, they must end in one 
shape or another of fatalism. Nor do I hesitate to 
say that the revolting doctrine so often taught from 
Christian pulpits has gone far toward the growth of 
the modern materialism. It was the saying of Plu- 
tarch, the devoutest of heathen, that he would rath- 
er believe in no God than in a Saturn, who ate his 
own children ; and it is not strange, when men have 
been called the victims of a hopeless and helpless 
destiny, that they should deny any responsibility at 
all. Yet as we are in little danger to-day of that 
harsh cr^ed, and much more of the plausible fatal- 
ism which wears the name of science, I shall turn 
directly to the field of modern inquiry. 

I state, then, at once the line of our argument. 
It is my purpose to show from experience that 



72 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

our responsibility for our actions is an acknowl- 
edged fact ; and that in tliis fact there is given 
us the assurance of a moral law, and of our power 
of choice. We meet liere, at the threshold, our 
champions of necessity. They claim "that through- 
out the universe, in , every form of inorganic or 
organic life, in crystal or plant, in the instinct of 
the brute, or the mechanism of our own bodies, 
there is a sure, irresistible law ; and thus in the 
soul of man, if w^e may use so old-fashioned and 
unscientific a word, is found the same unvarying 
order. Our minds are but a function of the gray 
matter of the brain ; '' without phosphorus no 
thought," in the phrase of a modern sage; and 
what our shallow morality has dreamed of as will 
is nothing but a passive obedience to our desires. 
Such is the claim I would examine by the clearest 
test. Our positive science is wont to boast that 
it rests on fact, and turns away with impatient 
scorn from speculative reasoning. I do not doubt 
that the rebuke is sometimes just; and if there be a 
truth I wish most to urge, it is that we are not to 
spin cobwebs here out of the bowels of theology, but 
to deal with realities. I accept the challenge, and 
shall leave it to you to judge whether the Christian 
moralist or these practical sages are the theorists. 
What, then, is the character of these facts which 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 73 

we are to examine ? I beg your special atten- 
tion to tins point, for it involves the whole in- 
quiry. It is the method of our champions of 
physical necessity to reason from the cases of 
natural weakness, or of social disorder, where the 
question of responsibility becomes obscure, to the 
conclusion that there is no freedom. Tet that 
is to take for granted the whole question. Here- 
after, we are to consider these darker sides of the 
subject ; but at the outset, we are not talking of 
idiots, or insane, or diseased, or undeveloped minds, 
but of a knowledge within the reach of every intel- 
ligent man. We turn, then, to this evidence of the 
social conscience. There are certain laws of ac- 
tion, not notions of your mind or mine, but re- 
cognized by all in daily life. We use the words 
merit, demerit, approbation, shame, remorse, in our 
common speech, and they stand for a reality as 
clear, as undoubted, as when we speak of a metal 
or an earth. It is by these we judge of the char- 
acter of men, and are judged in turn. Take any 
out of a thousand examples. What is merit ? A 
man has risked his life for tlie protection of a fel- 
low-man in the midst of a plague, while thousands 
sought their own safety ; and the verdict of all pro- 
nounces it an act of unselfish nobleness. You have 
sacrificed your cliances of wealth or oflice in the 



74 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

discharge of an honorable dnty. Your own con- 
science witnesses to the character of the deed^ that 
it is not hke a pleasure of the palate, or even of in- 
tellectual effort ; but purer, sweeter, higher than all ; 
the happiness of fulfilling the law of right. "What is 
demerit ? You have wronged an innocent man in 
a moment of selfish passion ; you have shrunk from 
the defense of a just cause through fear of losing 
your reputation. The verdict of the common con- 
science condemns you ; and when you awaken from 
your self-delusion, you feel a shame at your own 
act. Analyze now these judgments of the moral 
faculty. Each w^itnesses an obligation, and with 
it a responsibility. There could be no merit or 
demerit if there were no choice. A stone feels no 
remorse when it crushes a man ; a brute feels no 
remorse w^lien he teal^s his victim. We feel regret, 
but no remorse, when we have done an injury with- 
out design. If we were creatures who must obey a 
reigning desire, Avh ere could be the difference be- 
tween duty and impulse, virtue and lust ? All these 
would be empty names. I shall be met here by the 
old cavil, that this standard of right and wrong va- 
ries wdth different times and races, and therefore all 
these are notions of our education. But I reply 
that the variation does not disprove the principle. 
It is allowed by those who deny any innate ideas 



AKD PHYSICAL LAW. 75 

of morality, that education leads always to agree- 
ment in regard to the laws of moral action ; and 
this is to admit all we seek. There are thousands 
who will lie, or steal, or kill, and there is sophistry 
enough as to the decision of special cases ; but ly- 
ing, theft, and murder are wrongs in OA^ery code. 
Education develops conscience, but it can not create 
it. The child can not judge of distance save by 
experience ; but the faculty of eyesight is the gift 
of nature. It is enough that I rest the evidence 
there. But if there be, beyond such moralists who 
differ from us only in words, any who really claim 
that there can be no higher law than that of our 
sensual desires, I do not reason with them ; I leave 
them to their brutishness, and content myself with 
the decision of the social conscience. 

In this witness of our real experience, we reach 
the knowledge of what we mean by moral law. 
This pri:iciplo of responsibility reveals to us that 
there is an order higher than that of the physical 
world. And thus we lay the axe at the root of that 
■ pretended science of nature which denies our free- 
dom, on the ground that we are subjects of the same 
omnipotent power, whether it act more coarsely in 
the crystal, or more cunningly in the nervous fila- 
ments of the brain ; that our will is only the seem- 
ing choice of a creature, who can not act without 



76 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

motive, and that motive always the strongest pas- 
sion. It is from an ntter denial of the moral facts 
we have studied that the error springs. "We admit 
that no creature is independent on law ; bnt we 
afSrm that, of the very cliaracter of moral law, 
it is not a compulsory power as in nature; it is 
a power that pervades, influences, warns, yet is 
and must be determined by our personal choice. 
Let us turn to a few examples, w^hich will prove 
more than all general reasoning. I will take my 
illustration, first, from the striking law of the 
magnetic needle. You know the marvelous power 
by which the bit of steel within the box points the 
seaman through the darkness to the unchanging 
pole ; and some of you may have studied the princi- 
ple of its variations, so puzzling to the mariner in 
former days, as he steered through, unknown seas, 
and found his faithful guide seemingly untrue ; 
yet now the variations are known to be only a part 
of the same law. Compare the physical fact with 
the moral. We often use this illustration of the 
power of conscience, as it points to the polestar of 
duty ; but we must not in the image forget the 
greater contrast. I will take the example of a man 
of sincere moral feeling, yet in wdiom a self-indulgent 
habit has at times weakened the might of conscience ; 
I will suppose him in one of those critical hours 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 77 

such as come to most of iis in half-formed youth, 
tempted by the love of pleasure or by evil asso- 
ciates to sensual crime; it is a fearful struggle, 
for he knows the right, he recognizes the dan- 
ger, the motives of true action, but the allure- 
ment is strong ; he wavers, he pauses, but at last 
with one mighty effort and a prayer for divine 
help, he says, " I will not yield to sin." Analyze 
now this act of the will. Was the force that shook 
his better desire like that which sways the nee- 
dle? Was the motion that at last conquered, a 
compulsion ? "Was the law of duty variable under 
certain conditions, as the oscillation of the magnet 
is determined by the pole ? To ask this is to show 
you the difference between physical and moral 
power. 

But consider another case, where you perceive a 
more subtle natural force — that of chemical aflfinity. 
Tou shall take two cups of hydrochloric and nitric 
acid, in which some gold has been immersed ; each re- 
mains inert ; but mix them, and the gold combines 
at once with the chlorine. What is this force ? 
Has the chlorine any moral choice of the metal ? 
Turn now to another case of affinity for gold. 
A man has grown in the selfish lust of gain for 
years, yet thus far he has done no act of dishonesty ; 
his moral capacity has remained partly inert, as the 



78 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

acids before the mixture ; but by and by some cup 
of business chances is suddenly thrown into his 
grasping life ; a grand fortune is offered to his covet- 
ous heart, if he will only take the risk of a fraud ; 
he may have some slight twinges of conscience, 
but they vanish before the bait. What, now, is 
the motive that decides his act ? Is the affinity for 
the gold an irresistible law, like that of the acid ? 
Surely I need not say that to talk of necessity here 
is absurd. His lust is the product of his own self- 
nourished habit, and he is responsible for the guilt. 
Such illustrations can be multiplied without end. 
Each of us has known in his experience these 
battles of the selfish passions with the law of con- 
science ; and it is useless to reason them away by any 
bewildering talk of natural disease or vicious educa- 
tion. We fix our thought on these plain facts of 
our daily life, and we ask, "What do they prove ? 
They prove that the whole argument by w^hich the 
necessitarian claims that we are subject to moral as 
to physical law is based on an utter misconception. 
Natural force and moral force are essentially unlike. 
N^atural force acts without choice ; moral force in 
and with it. Natural force compels ; moral force 
persuades. Natural force never fails under given 
conditions ; moral force always depends on the per- 
gonal man . It does n ot matter whether the theology 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 79 

of Edwards or the psjcliology of Bain afiirni tliat, 
because we can not act without motives, our will 
must obey the motive. There is no such thing as a 
necessary motive. You may as well talk of a square 
circle. '^ Appetite/' in the words of Hooker, ^^is 
the mind's solicitor, the will is the mind's controller." 
If then, my friends, I have so made the truth 
clear by these illustrations, that you can see the root 
of all sophistry on this subject, I may sum it in a 
word. This is the law of responsibility. This, and 
this alone, gives you your nobleness above all lower 
creatures, as capable of moral growth. If there be 
no such responsibility, there is no real difference 
between sensual lust and purity, between self-indul- 
gence and self-sacrifice, no motive for duty, no pur- 
pose in education, no standard of character, no room 
for love, or honor, or justice, or goodness, and no 
social law save force. But if this power be in us, 
then we have in our freedom a law as mighty as that 
which sways the tides of the sea, yet far nobler, be- 
cause it acts from within, and is seated in the perso- 
nality of the man. We rise here to the sacred truth 
which the religion of Christ declares. It is in God 
we see the law, that is perfect freedom. He is 
bound by the necessity of His holiness ; He can 
never deny Himself; yet in the fullest meaning 
of that word, He is a law unto Himself, unf et- 



80 JVLORAL liESFONSIBILlTY 

tered in- His nioi-Ml clioice. And tlins^ although, 
as sinful beings, we can not claim tliat freedom, 
yetj as Augustine has said in his stately treatise on 
the will, even in our sin we recognize this moral 
capacity ; our sin is not oiu' nature, but the de- 
fect of our nature ; we are made for the willing 
choice of holiness, and as we live in obedience to 
His law, we grow toward the state where our 
liberty becomes an inward, abiding character. 

Fardon me, my friends, if I have dwelt too long 
on this more abstract view, for it was essential to fix 
the truth firmly at the outset. We have studied 
tlie evidence of conscience ; we are now to study 
it in the experience of real life. We are born 
Avitli this mental and moral constitution into a 
world where we find certain conditions of our 
growth. We inherit, first of all, a nature derived, 
in body and mind, through the long line of our 
parentage, and so affected by its influence, that the 
seeds of genius or of mental weakness, the infinite 
shades of our disposition, are an inevitable birth- 
right. Not only the book of revelation, but even 
that science which scouts Christian truth, confirms 
in the fresh light of its researches tlie doctrine of 
original sin, the great race-fact of the mental, mo- 
ral, and physical disease that taints the body of hu- 
manity. Let me indeed be clearly understood. I 



AXD PHYSICAL LAW. 81 

do not confound with snclia truth that notion of to- 
tal depravity, a nature without a single unselfish 
affection, a single capacity of good, in which a false 
theolo2:v and tlie fatalism we now examine ao;ree. 
Xo, I maintain the ^'iew which conscience as well 



as Scripture witnesses, that evil is not our natm^e, 
but onlv the disease of our true nature, tln^ough 
which we are to pass by the purifying power of God 
into our nobler condition. But, again, it is not only 
by this inheritance of birth we are affected ; we are 
to a vast degree shaped, in the whole process of our 
life, by the law of social circumstance. Climate, 
soil, education, liave their influence on the man, and 
none can escape these conditions. To one, his ex- 
istence from infancy is in tlie hixury of a palace, 
to another a battle witli poverty ; one is a savage 
in his wilds, another is nursed in the arts of refined 
civilization ; one has the ]3ure training of a Christian 
home, another has grown up in tlie dens of vice. 

What bearing have these facts, then, on our moral 
responsibility ? Xone is so absurd as to doubt that 
they have mnch to do with tlie formation of the 
man. But this is not the question. Do they anni- 
hilate moral freedom ? This is the position of the 
fatalist. Is it true ? To suppose it, is to deny our 
exj^erience, as he has already denied conscience. 
Each of us, Avhatever the elements that have gone 



82 MORAL, KESPONSIBILITY 

into liis being, is an individual person. His person- 
ality is seated in liis Mall, and life is the condition of 
his activity. This is the very constitution of a mo- 
ral creature, that he should be placed in a state 
where he can find the growth he needs ; and none 
can conceive of growth without it. We may imag- 
ine an ideal world, where there are no diseases to 
blight the body and no temptations to vex the peace 
of its sinless dwellers ; but this earth, with its min- 
gled sunshine and storm, its tropic bloom, yet its 
rocky soil that provokes labor, its gold and iron that 
must be digged from the bowels of the mine — this 
is the home of human creatures. None of us fails 
to recognize this fact in material or mental activity. 
The brute can never pass beyond tlie limits of cli- 
mate and zone that define his place in nature. But 
the highest achievements of man are earned in the 
battle wdth natural forces. What gives the hardy 
farmer of N^ew-England his manhood above the 
Cingalese who eats his bread-fruit, and lies in the 
sun, but this need of struggle? Who have won 
such triumphs in the sphere of intellectual toil as 
the men who have wrestled with the stern hin- 
drances of early years ? What is the life of man 
from birth to death but this resistance of the vital 
unit against the elements, that always tend to de- 
compose it ? But it is surely a nobler example of 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 83 

tlie same law we recognize in our moral progress. 
Tliat axiom of tlie master of science, '' Nature is 
conquered by obeying it," only reaches its highest 
meaning in the sphere of our spiritual struggle. 
Sin has entered into the world by the condition of 
our freedom, and its manifold, accumulated forms 
have left their curse on the history of the race. 
Yet there is no fatality in this. It is the best 
proof that a divine Providence, not fate, orders the 
life of man, since by the same constitution which 
entails disease, insanity, vicious dispositions, we in- 
herit also the germs of intellect and moral power. 
We do not charge on God or nature what is tlie 
product of our own self-will ; nay, we rejoice that 
in His goodness the diseases and hindrances of na- 
ture become the conditions of our holiness. Our 
lot does not infringe on the fact of personal respon- 
sibility ; it cj[uickens, it strengthens it ; it teaches 
what human life is meant to teach, that we are 
j)la3ed In a state where, if we strive with faith and 
energy, we work with Him who brings good out of 
all evil. Am I not speaking here of facts alLrecog- 
nize ? Is there a single virtue that has not been 
the fruit of such struggle? Is there a single na- 
tural infirmity that has not been changed into a no- 
ble quality ? Are not the highest examples of pu- - 
rity, of courage, of self-saci'ifice among those who 



84 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

liave wrestled with tlieir own passions and the evil 
w^orld ? If it he not so, then our life is a riddle, 
and holiness a dream. 

In this light, we reach the fullness of the truth 
which the Gospel of Christ reveals of the nature of 
our obligation and the promise of a divine grace. 
We are free, but such is our constitution that our 
freedom must pass by degrees, according to our use 
or our abuse, into a settled state of the character. 
We are free ; but we are not left alone in our life of 
struggle. There is a Holy Spirit, the source of all 
wisdom and strength, in whom we live and have our 
being ; and if we act in obedience to His laws, we 
are in harmony with His co-working grace, as the 
single w^ave moves with the tides of the ocean. 
This is the promise on which we rest. Christian 
believers ! ' This is the sacred truth that we hold 
when we adore God, our Father, our Redeemer, our 
Sanctifier ! But it is a truth alike for our warning. 
If we surrender to the temptation of our selfish 
passions and of the world around us, we pass at 
length into the slavery of nature ; our desires be- 
come our masters, our evil habits* become fastened 
on us ; and as we quench the spirit who ' waits on 
every conscience, we lose the power of recovery. 
'No arbitrary act of God hardens the heart ; but it 
is left, if we persist in sin, to its own hardening. 



ANI> PHYSICAL LAW. 85 

Read here that law of moral physiology, so fear- 
fully portrayed by the apostle, deeper and worthier 
of our study than the structure of these bodies ; 
that personal law which every man must know in 
the growth of his own character, which vindicates 
for ever the love of God, and leaves us alone in 
the consciousness of our responsibility; that law 
in whose light we trace, step by step, the whole 
long j)rocess of wrong, as the naturalist traces the 
embryo of the reptile through its wondrous changes. 
'' Lust when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin, 
and sin, when it is finished " — fearful word, that re- 
veals the meaning of a future life, as no arbitrary 
allotment, but the ripening of the seed sown here 
and now within us ! — " when it is finished, bringeth 
forth death." 

Such, my friends, is the truth I have endeavored 
to make clear by the witness both of conscience and 
experience. And now, with this full light, we may 
turn, in conclusion, to those mysteries of life which 
darken so many minds. I have hitherto postponed 
such cases, because I believe that all error on this 
subject comes from the science that gropes in the 
penumbra of social history until it loses its moral 
eyesight. It is from what is called an induction from 
two classes of facts — those of constitutional disease 
and vicious education — that our modern fatalism is 



86 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

drawn. We must look fairly at all such facts, nor need 
we soften a single sliade in the picture. There can 
be no question that with each generation of civilized 
life there have grown more complex forms of men- 
tal and moral malady ; and that our riper inquiry 
has discovered much beyond the knowledge of the 
past. Here, then, the naturalist finds room for his 
plausible theory. According to the view of one 
popular school, which has been largely accepted, 
the mental and moral powers have their determina- 
tion in the structure of the skull. A murderer is 
born with the organ of combativeness, and a thief 
with acquisitiveness in such excess, coupled with the 
small development of reverence or social affection, 
that there could be no escape from crime. It has 
boon afiirmed, again, by eminent physiologists, that 
the germs of every vice are to be found in some 
native derangement of the functions ; and the lines 
severing the physical from the moral are in most 
cases so blurred as to make any clear distinction im- 
possible. All crime is monomania, and all are in a 
degree monomaniacs. One kleptomaniac, to use 
the scientific name which has taken the place of the 
vulgar word thief, filches rings or old shoes, and 
another the gold in the bank- vault. One poisons a 
family, and another butchers his own children. 
We have the conclusion in the saying of a master 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 87 

of the same school, that when our legislation has 
become true science, it will treat all criminals as 
innocont victims of physical defect. 

"What, then, shall we think of such opinions as 
these? T]iGy have been advanced on the authority 
of men of professed learning, and we should w^ill- 
ingly extract whatever kernel of truth may be in 
them. "We do not doubt the fact and the variety 
.of such disease. We rejoice that many cases of 
physical infirmity, once treated with cruelty, are 
now submitted to the milder discipline of the hos- 
pital. Our knowledge of sanitary laws has improv- 
ed our . criminal jurisprudence ; nor do I doubt 
that it has quickened our faith in the principles 
of Christian reform rather than the reliction of 
the jail and the gibbet. But it is one thing to 
admit all such cases in their utmost extent, and 
Cj[uite another to infer that the bulk of man- 
kind is irresponsible. We do not punish the 
idiot or the insane ; but we knovv' that the social 
community is not made up of idiots or insane. 
Wo are all aware of the influence of our physical 
state on our mental and moral action ; we. know 
that a dyspepsia may give us gloomy views of life, 
and a fit of the gout may make us less good-natured 
Christians than our wont ; nay, we may even find 
some truth in the theory of r.n i^^^genioiis liuinorist. 



b« MOEAL RESPONSIBILITY 

that it may depend on the biliary duct whether 
we are inclined to a Calvinistic theology or a more 
genial tone of religion. But none of ns is so ab- 
\ surd as to deny, whatever our morbid humors, that 
we are, in all essential relations of life, capable of 
moral knowledge and choice. What strange power 
this habit of dealing with gases and earths and post- 
mortem dissections has to make some men of learning 
the veriest children in their knowledge of the first 
principles of human character or moral law ! If I 
should pretend to give an essay on the structure of 
the lungs, and should say nothing of its normal func- 
tion, but note all possible cases of tubercular disease, 
and then conclude that this was the nature of the 
lungs, I should follow the exact method of such rea- 
soners. To rear a theory of physical necessity out 
of such exceptional cases is to stultify all know- 
ledge. It makes no difference between the inherit- 
ed tendency and the growth of evil habits. It 
offers no hope for struggle against natural weak- 
ness. It educates our infirmities into full-grown 
vices. It destroys the whole moral basis on which 
society rests. Legislation would not become more 
scientific, but simply incapable of any decision, and 
at last anarchy. Admirable world ! w^here each mur- ' 
derer could claim his inherited passions as a person- 
al privilege, each thief urge his irresistible lust ; and 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 89 

the great robber wlioiri ^ve have lately sent to j)rison 
could plead that he obeyed the omnipotent 
law of nature, which created him like the shark to 
prey on the lesser fry of the social waters. iSTo ; we 
may thank God there remain moral sense and com- 
mon-sense enough to refute such sophistry. There 
are thousands who need the discipline of justice ; 
and the pretended humanity that forgets it is no 
mercy, but cruelty to the larger number, who are 
so unhappy as to have connnitted no crime to 
entitle them to the interest of our men of science. 
N'or would such science only palsy justice, but it 
would destroy the motive power of all benevolence. 
It is idle to talk of any social cure if we deny the 
fact of moral responsibility. He who has no capa- 
city to know right from wrong can never learn it ; 
and if there be no evil save physical infirmity, 
there is nothing to be learned, for the remedy is 
as hopeless as the disease. 

But I pass to the second of those mysteries 
so perplexing to many minds — I mean that of 
ignorance or vicious education. As we see the 
growing curse of our civilization, the hideous sta- 
tistics of the great city, where thousands are bred 
in the sunless dens of vice, and seemingly doomed 
to moral death, it is a problem that at times might 
tempt us to the merciless doctrine of Darwin, as if 



90 MOllAL KESPOKSIBILITY 

tlie same law of the destruction of tlie weak ]nany 
for the survival of the few were as true of the 
human race as of beast and reptile. But we thank 
God there is in the evil the ground of a nobler 
activity. We must not shut our eyes to the bear- 
ing of such facts on a Christian education. Do 
we accept the religion that Avould condemn these 
imhappy thousands by the same rule Vv^e apply to 
more favored classes ? God forbid such an affront 
to the Gospel of Christ ! N^or is it to be forgotten 
that we nmst begin with the cure of the outward 
evils, before we can do nmch for the training of 
the moral or religious character ; that the study of 
the laws of health, the better adjustment of social 
labor, the opening of new channels of industry, are 
noble features of our reform to-day. But surely 
we can admit all that a practical v/isdom asks, 
without concluding that the A^ces of mankind are 
wholly the result of physical law. Yet this is the 
doctrine taught by a large class of our wise men, 
in essays on reform, and theories of social science. 
It is useless to indulge in any speculative fancies of 
religious or moral improvement. The only aim of 
philanthropy is to rear this selfish animal man as 
w^e rear a breed of Alderneys or a better variety 
of fowls. Indeed, I knovf no book more disheart- 
ening to every lover of human good than one often 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 91 

quoted as an oracle of this modern school ; I mean 
Buckle's History of Civilization. The principle of 
physical necessity is his key to all social growth. 
The moral character of people or age is as mere a 
result of outward laws as a record of the weather ; 
and if we knovv^ the race, the climate, the conditions 
of deA^elopment, we may reckon the exact propor- 
tion of thieves, suicides, murderers. History, in 
his view, has been altogether falsely written on the 
theory of human freedom. Its ages, its great men, 
its progress in art, letters, social polities, all are 
facts of nature, as the question of the crops and the 
best modes of drainage. And what, then, does this 
historic arithmetic prove ? It proves no necessity 
at all. The reckoning of moral probabilities is not 
like a law of nature. We may learn much from 
such statistics for the wise method of our philan- 
thropy ; but to infer hence that there is no poNver 
of moral action, is a monstrous folly. What is a 
sociology that proposes to educate a being without 
any moral capacity ? Where shall we find in liis- 
tory, if it be only this product of outward causes, 
the highest truth that explains the past, or gives 
hope for the future? Wonderful philosophy of 
progress ! It opens a new view of the historic cha- 
racters of all time. A Domitian is as innocent in 
the amusement of killing Christians as in catching 



92 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

flies. A Borgia is as blameless a hero of his time 
as a St. Louis. ' The saints and the sages are as pure 
a growth of nature as the bread-fruit or the orange. 
The^ contests of civil or religious liberty are, as Mil- 
ton said of the heptarchyj "tlie battle of kites and 
crows." 

Is this tlie law of civilization ? A grub might on 
the same theory write the rise and fall of liis in- 
sect dynasties. We read law indeed in history ; 
we know the social influences that combine in 
the growth of its great ages ; but it is the moral 
power of man, as he struggles with the forces 
of nature and human life, that makes its grandeur. 
Even in the domain of physical science, inethinks 
a scholar should read the contradiction of such a 
theory. When I recount the marvels which a 
gifted countryman of our own in his book on Man 
and l^ature has gathered with a w^ealth of learn- 
ing as rare as is its Christian spirit ; when I 
remember how the w^eakest of creatures in bod- 
ily might has changed our rude planet during his 
few thousand years as wondrously as in any of 
the prehistoric ages ; how, through his toil, there 
has been a new distribution of plant and animal ; 
how climates have grown soft as he opened the 
forests to the sunshine ; lands have been won from 
the waters ; his dikes have defied the seas ; rivers 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 93 

have been guided into fresh channels ; torrid zone 
and polar ice have .yielded their secrets ; I know 
him to be more than the growth and slave of na- 
ture; I know the power his Maker gave him 
to subdue the earth. Yet this is but the lowest 
side of his capacity. His history reveals a higher 
conquest than in the physical world. In that Chris- 
tianity which our profound sage banishes from his 
view of civilization as quite beneath his interest ; 
those crowded centuries of progress from the 
hordes of ITorthern Europe to the world of to-day ; 
that faith glowing even in the shade of supersti- 
tion ; those heroes who died at the stake for what 
om* modern wisdom calls a faded legend ; the colos- 
sal person of a Luther, a Galileo, who led on the 
new order — in these I see what vindicates the moral 
rank of man, and at the same time shows the liv- 
ing guidance of God. History is nothing if it be 
not the biography of such leaders of the race. 
Take out of civilization this personality, and it is a 
page as void of human interest as the story of the 
ichthyosaurus and mammoths. You may call it 
progress ; I know nothing so cheerless and hopeless 
as such materialism. Xo ; it is the very opposite 
that a Christian' science teaches. Its triumphs have 
been the fruit of faith in the quickening power of 
goodness upon the moral nature. It is because, in 



94 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

the most depraved of human beings, there is some 
f oimtain of conscience, like the fresh springs under 
the salt sea, some striving after purity, some feel- 
ing of obligation, that we have hope in the re- 
demption of the man or of the race. 

I trust. Christian friends, that this law of re- 
sponsibility has been made clear to your reason and 
conscience. I have sought fairly to accept every 
light which a wise science can cast on the evils of 
human life ; but I have not disguised my view of a 
theory as false to science as it is to the spirit of 
Christianity. Is this the boasted result of modern 
knowledge ; this philosophy that can affront the 
most sacred convictions of the soul, and dissect 
the moral nature with as little heed of the hu- 
man beings around us as of tlie writhings of a 
frog under a galvanic battery ? No ! let such no- 
tions become, as they may be in an age of curious 
opinion, the creed of many half-thinking minds ; 
let the belief in the reality of moral law be shaken, 
and not only our hold of Christianity, but the life 
of social virtue will be palsied at the heart. We 
can not overrate the importance of this one truth. 
Our faith in the being of God, in the personal Pro- 
vidence that guides the world, and in a future exist- 
ence, is bound up with it. I thank God, indeed, 
that we need have no lasting fear of the triumph 



AND PHYSICAL LAW. 95 

of such error. Science itself will refute the crude 
theories that abuse its name. I look forward with 
a hearty faith to the day when its discoveries shall 
lead the mind of our time to a surer knowledge of 
that gospel which sheds the only perfect light on 
the darkness of human history and the mystery of 
evil ; and if the shifting clouds of modern opinion 
leave us sometimes in shade w, I keep my eyes fixed 
on the eternal sun. 

And thus, in closing, I would urge on you, my 
friends, for your own personal belief and action, to 
prize the sacred inheritance which God has given 
you in this moral truth. Let no subtleties of a 
Christian or an unchristian speculation obscure it. 
Whatever the mysteries of life, whatever the strug- 
gles of our own personal experience, hold fast the 
belief that there is a Providence, that duty^ and ho- 
liness are realities, that we are not the slaves of 
destiny, but the children of God. Study that fact 
of your spiritual being in the history of mankind. 
Eead there the commentary witnessed in every evil 
life, from the monarchs of crime, who have said, 
'' Evil, be thou my good," to the thousands of lesser 
wrong-doers ; the profligate who has passed from 
lust to utter uncleanness ; the dishonest who has 
mirsed his greed to open fraud ; the murderer who 
has plunged from unchecked passion into the abyss 



96 MORAL BESPONSIBILITY 

of death. Study it in the biography of all the 
good who have wrestled with the infirmities of na- 
ture, and by the grace of God have won the bat- 
tle ; the scholars, the saints, the heroes, who have 
left us their lives, next to that of the perfect Mas- 
ter, to teach us the victory of faith. Study it in 
your own consciences ; for this knowledge concerns 
us above all others. We know that there rests on 
each of us this law of our responsibility ; and while 
we can not choose our lot, we can choose to make it 
the condition of triumph or of defeat. We rejoice 
in such a gift, but we rejoice with fear. We rejoice 
that we are made in the image of God ; we fear 
that we may be the bond-slaves of an evil will : 
Ave rejoice that we have the renewing grace of the 
Holy Spirit ; w^e fear that we may quench it by our 
own neglect : w^e rejoice that we may win the life 
eternal ; we fear while we hold in our slight grasp 
the issue of life or death. That truth speaks to 
every honest mind. It speaks for our warning and 
for our comfort in the mingled record of our past 
years ; the struggles of passion with duty, the sins, 
the trials, yet the rewards for which we can thank 
the Author and Giver of grace. Yes, blessed be 
God ! this is the witness of a Christian conscience to 
the truth df His Gospel ; and as we close the book 
of our own hearts and of history, it is with no philp- 



AND PHYSICAL LAW 97 

sopliy of despair, but with a deeper reverence for 
those laws which He has implanted in our nature, 
and an unshaken faith in the divine Love that 
speaks to-day over the body of our humanity, " It 
is not dead, but sleepeth." 



THE RELATION OF MIRACLES 

TO THE 

CHRISTIAN FAITH. 



REV. J. H. RYLANCE, D.D.; 

RECTOR OF ST. MARK'S CHURCH, NEW-YORK. 



THE RELATION OF MIRACLES TO THE CHRISTIAN 
FAITH. 



'' If I do not the works of my Fatlier, believe me not. But 
if I do, thougli ye believe not me, believe the works." — John 
10 : 37, 38. 

Kg unfair reflection was meant to be implied, I 
take it, in the antithesis between '' Christian Truth 
and modern Opinio7i^^ which we find in the gene- 
ral title of this current course of religious lectures. 
"We are to see in such superscription no more than 
a simple, candid recognition of the fact, that be- 
tween what is commonly regarded as '^ Christian 
Truth," on the one hand, and certain "Opinions," 
theories, or hypotheses, on the other, there exist 
various occasions of dissension and controversy, to- 
Avard an adjustment of which these apologetic dis- 
courses are meant to be an honest and a substantial 
contribution. 

How far they will serve to this end Avill depend, 
in the main, perhaps, upon the intellectual and 
scholarly competency of those appointed to discuss 
the several subjects. But something will depend, 



102 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES 

also, upon the temper or spirit in which such dis- 
cussions are conducted and accepted. We are sup- 
130sed to enter the arena of debate free from every 
feeling prejudicial to Truth ; with no disposition to 
dogmatize or dictate ; nor to accept dogmatism, on 
the one side or on the other. The largest latitude 
must be allowed to investigation, and the severest 
exercise to the critical faculty must be freely con- 
ceded to all, or we had better retire from the strife, 
and betake ourselves for safety to recognized and 
accepted authorities. 

The want of such an open-minded and impartial 
tolerance is an imputation very commonly alleged 
against the Christian apologist, and the reproach 
must be acknowledged as sometimes well-deserved. 
But the charge may be fairly retorted, alas ! upon 
some who seem to assume that the judicial temper 
is never disturbed in men of science, nor the line of 
a rigorous logic ever forcibly bent to sustain a fa- 
vorite hypothesis. Such a suspicion seldom fairly 
lies, perhaps, against acknowledged leaders of sci- 
entific thought ; but in the ranks of their followers, 
there are many, it may be feared, who strain the 
doctrines of their masters, or make inferential ap- 
plications of them, which betray what we may 
mildly term an unscientific animus. Men of this 
order constitute in our day a sort of lay-priesthood, 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 103 

as narrow, and intolerant, and tjrannons in temper 
as the priesthood of the Church ever was in the 
days of its darkest supremacy. And this temper 
we encounter in its most arrogant mood specially 
in the field assigned me for discussion this evening. 
Inspired and fortified by the predominant tenden- 
cies and teachings of modern Materialism, scientific 
skepticism has waxed bold and defiant of late, and 
the spirit of this type of infidelity to-day is not so 
much one of doubt, as of scorn, of all supernatural 
claims and pretensions. The leading adversaries of 
historical Christianity, in this school, disdainfully 
refuse to consider any evidence whatever submitted 
in favor of any special intervention upon the estab- 
lished order of IsTature, but start with the assump- 
tion as a postulate, that a miracle is impossible. 

The extravagance of such a position must be ob- 
vious, however, to every candid thinker. Such a 
sweeping negative is incapable of being proved, ex- 
cept by an exhaustive induction, not only of all the 
facts of Nature as we know it now, but of all its 
past transitions and stages of development, and of 
all the possibilities which the future may have in re- 
serve. The jpossibility of miracles, indeed, cannot 
be consistently denied, except on the ground of 
sheer Atheism. But the existence of a supernatu- 
ral Being is necessarily assumed in the very terms 



104 THE RELATIOJS" OF l^IIRACLES 

of the controversy between Faith and Unbelief. If 
such a preliminary claim be denied, cadit qucBstio: 
there is an end, of course, to all argument upon the 
matter. The system of Nature can not arrest or in 
any way interfere with its own order and functions. 
In other words, Nature cair not be 5i/j?^/'-natural.^ 

The abstract possibility of miracles must there- 
fore be conceded before advance can be made in 
any direction in the conduct of the discussion. The 
question of the inoral or contingent possibility of 
such phenomena remains, and such possibility may 
be legitimately denied. But the denial cannot be 
allowed to rest upon a merely partial induction of 
facts, or upon evidence derived only from one 
sphere of thought or research. For the problem is 
mixed, and its solution can not be left to any one 
professional school. Let the Materialist, or the Po- 
sitivist, or the representatives of any of our various 
types of naturalistic science, submit their facts and 
arguments in disproof of the claim that Almighty 
God has ever intervened, or that He does intervene, 
or that He ever will intervene, in a supernatural 
way, with the order or functions of Nature, and the 
evidence must be received with the respect due to 



* '' The possibility of a miracle is involved in the recogni- 
tion of a Divine will." — Prof. Plumptre. 



TO THE CHRISTIAN TAITH. 105 

its inti^isic force. But Moral and Spiritual Pliilo- 
sophyand Historical Criticism will claim to be heard 
at the same bar, not merely in mitigation of the 
evidence supplied by Physical Science, but. in rever- 
sal of some of its characteristic conclusions. For 
though Physical Science may be competent to affirm 
what is^ within the limits of its own observation 
and experiment, it is not competent, ^^'i^t^atZ Science, 
to say what has or has not been in the past, or wliat 
may or may not be in the future, except as a pre- 
sumption from tlie present order of things ; or to 
say what the cause or causes are, or are not, to w^hich 
Science is compelled, in the last analysis, to assign 
all the varied phenomena Avhieh crowd the Held of 
its investigation. 

The student of a merely phenomenal science be- 
comes intrusive and impertinent, therefore, wdien 
he presumes to prescribe limits to the possibilities 
of the mysterious Energy which w^orks beneath and 
through phenomena, or to the Intelligence which 
seems to direct its operations and issues ; but he be- 
comes positively offensive and ludicrously illogical 
when he propounds his universal negative as a bar 
to all farther investigation or debate, which nega- 
tive he can only sustain, if he condescend to defend 
his position at all, by u very limited induction of so- 
called facts, many of which may be still open to re- 



106 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES 

view, while some may be doomed to final rejection. 
Let liim say that he finds no trace of miraculous in- 
trusion upon the order and sequences of Nature 
within the widest scope of his inspection or experi- 
ment, and we assent. No one claims any such dis- 
covery. But let him confess, too, if he would be 
consistent with the wise reserve of the best minds 
of his own school, and with the essential limits of 
its special sphere, that a merely phenomenal science 
can never be made to yield a particle of evidence 
against i\\Q possibility of miracles. 

I shall hold myself justiiied, therefore, in assum- 
ing a Theistic basis for the argument I am here to 
submit, while I may be allowed to premise, also, 
that the range of the discussion will be confined to 
the miracles ascribed to Christ and His apostles, 
deeming it enough to authenticate the principle, 
without attempting to define the extent of its ap- 
plication. The substantial truth of the Gospel his- 
tories will be assumed, for it is not worth while to 
discuss the meaning or the value of the w^ords or 
works of One the reality of whose life and character 
is denied ; not meaning to cover by such assump- 
tion, of course, the question in debate, but availing 
myself of such materials only as the luost destruc- 
tive school of criticism concedes. 

In venturing to advance, therefore, let it be 



TO THE CHRISTIAN" FAITH. 107 

frankly admitted that there are antecedent, instinc- 
tive, necessary presumptions against the credibility 
of any event reputed to be miraculous ; which pre- 
sumptions are inspired by the uniformity of Na- 
ture, and confirmed by the practical trust we are 
compelled to repose in her invariable and stead- 
fast order, and by the beneficent results of obedi- 
ence to her equal, inflexible laws. And this instinc- 
tive feeling or faith has been immensely fortified 
by the progress of scientific discovery, very notably 
within recent years. From the time of Thales, 
such progress has largely consisted in " the elimi- 
nation of supposed Divine interferences, and in the 
disclosure of an established order. One department 
of Nature after another has been brought within 
the circle of ascertained law. Phenomena, seem- 
ingly capricious, have been found to recur with a 
regularity not less unvarying than the succession of 
day and night."^ A comet was once looked upon 
as a sort of firebrand, which the Almighty had 
thrown into space to startle and to terrify the occu- 
pants of our globe, and its career was watched in 
amazement and fear, lest haply it might strike this 
unruly orb, and light it up as a great funeral-pyre, 
a spectacle and a warning to the outlying sisterhood 

* Prof. Fislier. 



108 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES 

of worlds. But to-day, we track its brilliant marcli 
through the heavens with as much coinj)osure as we 
trace the silvery pathway of the quiet moon. Pes- 
tilence was once the arbitrary infliction of Divine 
vengeance upon the sins and depravities of peoples. 
Now, we have theoretically and practically come to 
account for it as a consequence of the breach of san- 
itary laws. The earthquake was once esteemed no- 
thing less than the immediate voice of God, and it 
was the direct hand of Omnipotence which tore the 
hills from their foundations, and rent the bars of 
the solid earth, burying cities and populations in a 
common grave. ISTow, it is merely tlie unequally 
distributed forces of Nature finding an outlet for 
tliemselves in this somewhat rude and disorderly 
way. Thus scientific research and achievement 
have combined with the popular instinct to create 
not merely an antipathy, but what passes among 
some for a well-grounded conviction, against all ar- 
guments in favor of the super-natural. Yet the 
feeling is nothing better than an imposing preju- 
dice, while, logically regarded, the conclusion has 
been reached by a sort of leap in the dark; for 
though the induction has been carried far beyond 
the limit to which our forefathers had applied the 
process, it is confessedly very far from complete 
still, viewed in regard to either Space or Time. 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 109 

And since Science is forward to tell us tliat she 
knows nothing of causes or of final ends, that she 
simply seeks to know what is^ and not the whence^ 
or why^ or wliiiher of things, there may be, be- 
yond the penetration of her finest instruments, or 
the detection of her subtlest analysis, or the discov- 
ery of her boldest explorations, a supernatural In- 
telligence and Power, evidence of whose special 
operation may be possibly found in other spheres^ 
which Physical Science has failed to find in her 
own. It is at least premature, therefore, if not im- 
pertinent, to tell us that the evidence is all in, and 
the verdict recorded, Avhile the evidence is aA^owedly 
defective, and the verdict ex "parte. 

The fashionable but pitifully inadequate concep- 
tion of Nature, in the world of modern Material- 
ism, is that Nature is a purely physical organism, 
whose causes are in and whose effects are wholly 
from itself ; a huge automatic machine, Avliich lias 
in it, either by original endowment or from an in- 
herent necessity, the powers of self-movement, 
self-renewal, self -propagation. The great Artificer, 
when He built it (if, in mere courtesy. Science will 
still allow that Nature ever had a Maker at all), left 
it to run on without intervention or inspection from 
Him ; left it to grind out results in a blind, relent- 
less Avay, which it were wise if men would look 



110 THE RELATION OF MIKACLES 

upon as stern necessities inerely, and x^njoy them or 
endure them in tliankless, dumb submission. Ka- 
ture lias thus been deified by the disciples of our 
latest infidelity ; her laws are adequate to account 
for all j^henomena, to satisfy all necessities. A Di- 
vine Providence was the amiable conceit of our in- 
tellectual infancy. Men arc wiser now. Nature is 
the all and in all. She has the springs of a perpe- 
tual movement and progress in herself. Is^o intelli- 
gence guides her course ; no almighty hand con- 
trols her functions. She is a scheme of rigid and 
relentless necessity ; the incarnation of fate ; an end- 
less round of cause and effect ; a huge mill, in which 
man is doomed to tread the ever-circling wheel till 
he drop into the oblivion beneath. But cries or en- 
treaties can not help him ; so, like the wiser brute, 
let him step patiently to time, or the great wheel 
may grind him to powder. 

This is the Gospel of modern Materialism, and 
the deus ex macliina which works all the mighty 
Avonders wdiicli we group under this somevvdiat 
vague term Nature, is Law, to the loose or merely 
rhetorical use of which word we may trace many of 
the impotent conclusions Avhich some of our best 
minds seem to have reached in their attempts to 
discredit the accepted faith of Christendom. Com- 
mon people arc filled with a mute reverence as they 



TO THE CHRISTIA:^^ FAITH. Ill 

sit at the feet of ouv scientific authorities, who talk 
so imposingly of the omnipotence and immutability 
of law ; which law, they tell us, is adequate to ac- 
count for all the phenomena of the universe, with 
no indebtedness to a Supreme Power. We are im- 
posed upon by words, maxims, formulas ; for, strict- 
ly speaking, a law is nothing but a generalization of 
the mind, an intellectual abstraction, and has no 
concrete or potential existence at all. The mind 
perceives, through observation or by experiment, 
that phenomena come into being or transpire uni- 
formly under certain conditions, and then we are 
said to have discoA^ered the law of their being or 
operation ; but in truth, we liave simply discovered 
and fornmlated the conditions or coincidences of 
their being and action. '^ A scientific law is not an 
ordinance, but a record." There is something be- 
neath or behind the phenomena which produced 
them, but what that something is we nmst learn 
else^Yhere than in the school of Physical Science. 
" The mere ticketing and orderly assortment of ex- 
ternal facts," observes the Duke of Argyll, " is con- 
tinually spoken of as if it were in the nature of ex- 
planation, and as if no higher truth in respect to 
natural plienomena were to be attained or desired ;" 
and vro are left to infer that there is no call for any 
power aboN^c or beyond law, eitlier to originate or 



112 THE KELATION OF MIKACLES 

direct its movements. This would seem to be tlie 
faitli of tlie fashionable philosophy in our day, 
Avhich is seldom formally and fully afhrmed, how- 
[ ever, but Avhich is rather implied or insinuated in a 
vague, grandiloquent style of talk. But by the in- 
jection of a logical solvent, we may detect the most 
extravagant absurdities in such wide-sweeping as- 
sumptions. ^' The universe is ordered and ruled by 
law " — that is the favorite formula. But it covers 
an enormous fallacy. Ordered and ruled by law ! 
Why, then, order is the Orderer ! the rule is the 
Ruler ! which claim involves an absurdity, since or- 
der is a resultant of some anterior cause or causes ; 
and we are thus detected in confounding sequences 
with antecedents, and are fairly chargeable with 
talking nonsense. 

" No," it might be said, " not law as a mere gener- 
alization, as an observed uniformity of processes or 
results only ; that is not wdiat is meant. But law as 
the expression oiforce^ which operates and reveals 
itself through fixed laws." Yes, force ! It is 
manifest that we have needed that conception all 
along to complete our conception of Nature. Co- 
existences, resemblances, and successions are not 
enough. Laws are more than '^ an observed order of 
facts." They are the grooves, so to speak, through 
which some sort of insj^iration^ wjlicence^ 'iyoioei\ 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 113 

flows, lliiding expression for itself in manifold and 
ever-varjing phenomena. Force is tlms admitted 
by all to be an indispensable postulate in tlie inter- 
pretation of J^ature, of which a large, free use is 
made in current speculation, especially in the vari- 
ous schools of materialistic philosophy, in which the 
concej)tion is made to fill the vacancy created by 
the denial of a personal God. Force is thus the 
latest name given to the " unknowm god " of Sci- 
ence; a convenient designation of that animat- 
ing, energizing, wonder-working Power which ever 
escapes detection ; that subtle, mysterious Some- 
thing which penetrates and vitalizes every atom 
in the universe ; wdiich 

" Warms in tlie sun, refreslies in tlie breeze, 
Glows in tke stars, and blossoms in tlie trees ;" 

but of which w^e learn no more as to its origin or 
essence when we trace it to " protoplasm " with 
Mr. Huxley, or call it " animal spirits " wdth Des 
Cartes. We cover the mystery wdth a name, and 
fondly assume we liave explained it ; but we are no 
nearer to a solution of the great problem than be- 
fore. 

But we have made an immense advance toward 
a sounder philosophy of Nature, and toward a 
worthier conception of something beyond and 



114 . THE KELATION OF MIRACLES 

above Nature, since we have liad done with bar- 
ren talk about some sort of self-executive me- 
chanism as tlie best account to be given of the 
l^resent economj of things ; more especially since 
we have learned to speak, not of forces^ but of 
Force, ''The tendency of Natural Science, in its 
earlier stages, is to- establish a plurality of forces. 
Nature is conceived to have in stock as jnany pow- 
ers as she has kinds of product to display.'' But 
since it has been shown tliat '' all the forces com- 
prised under the term ' physical ' are so ' corre- 
lated ' as to be no sooner expended in one form 
than they reappear in another — in fact, to be con- 
vertible inter se — a dynamic identity, masked by 
transmigration," has been established ; which doc- 
trine has been carried up and applied to Yital and 
Mental forces — the conclusion, now universally ac- 
cepted, being, tliat " the plurality of forces is an il- 
lusion; that, i]i reality, and behind the variegated 
veil of phenomena, there is but one force, the soli- 
tary fountain of the whole infinitude of change."'-^ 

Strangely enough, then, through avenues that we 
never expected to conduct us thither, we have come 
upon an underlying central Unity ^ of which all out- 
ward forms and functions are but the necessary in- 

* Rev. James Martineau. 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 115 

struments or results. The mnltitiule of gods with 
which the older sciences had peopled space have all 
vanished, and in their stead we have one grand, 
awful, onmipresent Power! It is surely to be count- 
ed a solid o-ain to those who have all alono; held 
that Xature, nianifokl and devious in form and 
movement, is nevertheless a witness to the unity of 
something deeper than Xature, and which they, in 
their innocence or fanaticism, have been content to 
call God. 

But we have come upon something more wonder- 
ful still, even upon, that which Philosophy claims, 
with the assent of Science, to call Sjnrititality / not 
in its full theological sense, perhaps, but as an ad- 
missible desi2:nation of an attribute which we are 
compelled to regard as hyperphysical or immateri- 
al. '' If," says the writer just cpioted, '^ we are to 
reduce the numerical variety of forces to one, which 
member of the series is to remain as the type of all ? 
Shall we more rightly presume that the lowest term, 
the mechanical, passes upward and reappears in the 
form of mind? or that the highest descends, divest- 
ing itself of prerogative cpialities at each step, and 
appearing at last with quantitative identity alone ? 
For answer to these questions, we must turn from 
the physical to the metaphysical scrutiny of the 
main conception. .... Cast your eye, then, along 



116 THE KELATIOX OF MIKACLES 

tlie series emimerated by Grove and Carpenter, and 
ask yourseK in which of these forms the dynamic 
idea originally necessitates itself. Is it that you 
have to supply it on seeing an external body change 
its place ? or on witnessing some chemical phenom- 
enon, as an acid stain of red on a blue cloth ? or on 
noticing the needle quiver to the JSTorth ? It will be 
admitted that, if we ourselves were purely passive, 
all these changes might . cross our visual field with 
only the effect of a time-succession — ^first one move- 
ment and then another ; while, conversely, if, with- 
out any of these phenomena exhibiting themselves 
before us, we ourselves were in the active exercise 
of Volition more or less difficult, the idea of Force 
would be provided for. It follows that Will is the 
true type of the conception." " The sense of ef- 
fort,'' Dr. Carpenter affirms, is the ground of all 
our " causal thought," " the form of Force which 
may be taken as the type of all the rest," declaring 
that our consciousness of Force is really as direct as 
is that of our own mental states ; and concluding 
that " Force must be regarded as the direct expres- 
sion or manifestation of that mental state which w^e 
call Will."-'^ 

Do Ave realize the grandeur and scope of this doc- 

•'' ''Mutual Relations of llie Vital and Physical Forces." 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 117 

trine ? a doctrine which finds its ultimate authority 
in consciousness and its sanction in the council- 
chamber of Science — know we what it means ? It 
means, in the language of an acknowledged author- 
ity in the world of experimental philosophy,"^ 
" that the laws of Nature are but the modes of ope- 
ration of the Divine Intelligence, that the forces of 
Nature are but the omnipresent energizing Divine 
Will, that even the objects of Nature are but the 
embodiments of Divine thoughts." It means that 
all the forms and functions of Nature are the ex- 
pressions, mediate or immediate, of an immanent 
Mind, of an omniscient and omnipotent God, " from 
whom, and by whom, and to whom are all things, 
to whom be glory and dominion for ever !" 

In the conduct of the discussion thus far, I have 
been chiefly aiming to secure a fulcrum on which to 
rest the lever of a positive argument. Is it too 
much to claim that the task is accomplished ? Na- 
ture is not a Totality nor a Finality ; but a passive 
and an obedient instrument in the hands of Intelli- 
gence and Power, which direct the complex Organ- 
ism toward the attainment of other and higher ends 
than its own being and necessities. A new class of 
terms, therefore, have successfully asserted their 

* Prof. Le Conte. 



118 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES 

claim to admission into the vocabulary of Science — 
Intelligence, Will, Purpose — which can never again 
he remitted to the region of pure abstractions, or be 
counted as among the mere " fictions of metaphy- 
sics." They are recognized positive factors or postu- 
lates in the latest conception or scheme of the uni- 
verse, which Physical Science has effectively contri- 
buted to construct. As we track our way along the 
ever-ascending line in pursuit of ^Hhe great secret," 
the process here culminates in man ; and in the liber- 
ty, intelligence, and will of man, we have the essen- 
tial lineaments of an image of God. What I have 
hitherto argued for as a jpossibility^ in this higher 
sphere, is fact. Man is not a thing^ but a power^ 
" working all things," within the limited area allot- 
ted him, "after the counsel of his own will;" tak- 
ing hold of the raw material of things, and, recom- 
bining its forms and relations and forces, getting 
at results which I^ature alone never could have 
attained, the concejDtion and realization of which 
are due to the intervention and controlling supre- 
macy of Mind, which thus asserts its supernatural 
character and prerogative by crossing, suspending, 
or invigorating the functions and processes of 
ITature, in the accomplishment of purposes above 
ITature ; in meeting necessities of which ITature 
knows nothing, breaking through the environment 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. " 119 

of economic restrictions, or bending tliem to the 
furtherance of thought, affection, aspiration ; mould- 
ing the crude clay of things into marvelous forms 
of beauty, or directing it to high and beneficent 
uses ; seeking, through all combinations, processes, 
scrutinies, to read the riddle of moral being, to find 
some prophecy of a higher destiny, to catch some 
echo of a voice which may lead us through " this 
dim obscure," into the light and joy of an eternal 
home! Has any such voice been heard in om' 
world? "We are in quest of an answer to that 
inquiry. 

A footing for the argument is conceded then. 
If man is a wonder-worker, we may possibly dis- 
cover ground for faith in a miracle-wovker. When 
we have climbed to the plane of man's inferior lord- 
ship of Nature, the ascent is continuous still, and we 
climb up through hint and inference, through ana- 
logy, intuition, revelation, to the uppermost con- 
ceivable plane of an infinite Intelligence and Power. 
The human will is the acknowledged spring of a 
spontaneous energy. Somewhere there must be a 
Fountain-head of that energy w^hich streams through 
all the avenues and conduits of creation. By the 
causal intervention of man upon the order and se- 
quences of Nature, results are reached confessedly 
prseter-natural. It cannot be deemed a shocking 



120 THE KELATION OF MIRACLES 

impiety tlierefore, or a merely conventional suj)er- 
stition, to conceive of Almighty God other than as 
an idle spectator of the automatic movements of a 
manifold organism. Christianity is a bold and per- 
sistent affirmation of the fact, that God not only * 
constructed the organism, but that He directs its 
movements, and that at certain ej)Oclis of its history, 
under special groups of conditions, He has come 
down upon its ordinary workings in what we are 
wont to call a miraculous way. "What is the char- 
acter and value of the evidence upon which such a 
claim or pretension rests ? 

The case may be broadly stated thus. Jesus Christ 
and His Apostles profess to have wrought, or it is 
claimed that they wrought, many wonderful works, 
under the immediate authority and by the special 
power of God. I do not add, be it observed, as 
" signs" or authenticating notes of a Divine commis- 
sion ; for that were an unnecessary and unjust limita- 
tion of the facts in many cases. All of Christ's mir- 
acles may have been signs or attestations of His di- 
vine mission in effect^ but not all of them were such 
by immediate and express design. Many of the won- 
ders wrought by Jesus must be regarded as the re- 
sults of a spontaneous effluence of wisdom and good- 
ness, in connection with which it is gratuitous to 
find any evidential design whatever. These wonders 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 121 

or signs, it may be added, moreover, are so wrought 
lip into the texture of the story of Christ's hfe, that 
it is simply impossible to eliminate the ordinary 
from the exceptional elements of its contents. The 
New Testament records these events in a plain, 
straightforward, imambignoiis style, as historically 
true. They cannot be fairly regarded as mere ap- 
pendages to the life and work of Christ, which w^e 
can reject Avithout damage to the substantial integ- 
rity of the record, or to the coherence and unity of 
the character and mission of Jesus ; for when Ave 
liaA'-e discarded the prseter-natural facts of the 
Christian Scriptures, it Avill be found that Ave have 
a very meagre and fragmentary residuum left, in the 
shape of ethical and practical precepts. The Incar- 
nation and the Eesurrection of Christ, at least, must 
be held to be integral factors of the Gospel, or the 
story of Evangelists and Apostles becomes "another 
Gospel," of Avhich Christendom has known nothing. 
I am not saying that the case Avas actually so, which 
Avould be to preclude all further argument on the 
subject ; but that so runs the record. The issue 
is plain, therefore, and cannot be evaded. If the 
miracles of Christ are incredible, the ISTeAv Testa- 
ment is incredible ; Christianity is incredible ; for 
as a distinctive system, it manifestly rests on the 
miraculous advent and Avork of One who said, " If 



122 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES 

I do not tlio works of my Fatherj believe me not ; 
but if I do, tlioiigli ye believe not me, believe the 
works." 

This broad statement reqnires to be limited, how- 
ever, by sundry qnalilications, throngli which the 
precision and force of the argument may come into 
fuller view. We are to keep the mind free of all 
suspicion, in the first place, that Christ's miracles 
were, in any true sense, merely arbitrary infrac- 
tions upon tlie domain of a Divine order. "We are 
to claim for them rather that they were beneficent 
reassertions and vindications of such order ; repara- 
tions of defective or diseased parts of the great 
Kosmos, as when He healed the leper or gave sight 
to the blind. Such phenomena require us to con- 
cede no more than an orderly subordination of 
secondary to primary causes. We are familiar with 
such subordination in the sphere of human enter- 
prise and achievement. Is it only when a Divine 
j)ower comes down upon the chain of causation, dis- 
pensing with intermediate processes, that such inter- 
ference is to be deemed a lawless intrusion ? The 
doctrine of the late Mr. Baden Powell, of "a series 
of eternally impressed consequences," is sometimes 
assumed by our scientific schools to afford a key to 
the true interpretation of Nature. Fichte, as cited 
by the late Dean Mansel, gives us a very picturesque 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 123 

statement of tlie doctrine. '^ Let ns imagine," says 
lie, " this grain of sand lying some few feet further 
inland than it actually does. Then must the storm- 
wind that drove it in from the seasliore liave been 
stronger than it actually was. Then must the pre- 
ceding state of the atmosphere by which this wind 
was occasioned, and its degree of strength deter- 
mined, have been different from what it was, and 
the previous changes which gave rise to this parti- 
cular weather ; and all to carry this particular grain 
of sand a few feet farther than the point where it 
actually lies !" All perfectly pertinent and just, 
upon the one assumption that there is nothing in 
God's creation but automatic mechanism, or blind, 
determinate forces. But there is, unless the con- 
sciousness and experience of the world are illusions 
or lies. The human Will is a fountain of free force, 
which suspends or modifies the action of the mighti- 
est and most inexorable laws of Nature, as when I 
lift a hand or move a foot, I arrest or limit the law 
of gravitation ; and yet no one dreams of shock or 
' disturbance of any sort to the normal order of 
thino-s from such interference with its ordinarv 
antecedents and sequences. Only let the same 
freedom and prerogative be conceded to the Divine 
Will, on a higher and wider plane of operation, and 
what becomes of the charge that a miracle means 



124: THE RELATION" OF MIRACLES 

anarchy and ruin to ^' the constitution and course of 
Nature "? And yet it is by sucli sophistical plead- 
ing that men seek to justify the horror they affect 
to feel whenever we speak of the miracles of Christ ! 
while the" advocates of Christian Truth have some- 
times incantioiisly lent supj)ort to such an antipathy, 
in speaking of a miracle as a violatiofi of natural 
law ; w^hich is to be regarded as a merely verbal in- 
discretion, perhaps, in most instances, but Avhich 
allows of mischievous inferences and applications, 
of which their adversaries have not been slow to 
take advantage. It is nnfortunate that the phrase 
ever gained currency, since it seems to imply some 
sort of conflict in the Divine plan and government 
of the w^orld. "Whereas it must follow, from the 
conception of the Supreme Ruler asinflnitely wise 
and powerful, that there can never liave arisen any 
occasion of contradiction or collision in the economy 
which He first ordained and continues to administer. 
He could never have been taken by surj)rise by any 
emergency not before provided for, nor can there 
possibly have ensued any sort of failure in the 
accomj)lishment of His purposes calling for any 
special intervention of wisdom or power, which we 
conld reasonably regard as special to the Divine 
Mind, at least, though possibly appearing special 
to finite Intelligences. Wq are to conceive of a 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 125 

iniracle, therefore, not as a Adolent irruption, of 
power npon the normal order and action of things, 
bnt as a subordination of ordinary to extraordinary 

^ causes, provided for in the original scheme and con- 
stitution of the universe. And thus we may vin- 
dicate the place and function "which are claimed for 
miracles, without resorting to assumptions Avliich do 
violence to our necessary conceptions of the Divine 
government as a government under fixed and har- 
monious laws. 

We are to guard, in the next j)lace, against the 
concej)tion or the application of the Christian mir- 
acles a^(^6>m^Z^2^^ '^^l themselves *j as destitute of all 
moral value, and void of all moral aim. AVc are to 
regard them rather as the legitimate effects of 
causes which embraced in the scope of their opera- 
tion and aim such phenomena as mere incidents in 
their wider working ; as links in a chain which runs 
along all the steps and stages of that sublime evolu- 
tion of the Divine counsels of which history is a 
fragmentary record, and an installment of the final 

•interpretation. Thus viewed, miracles were the 
natural consequences, so to speak, of the advent and 
ministry of a Divine Messenger, which occasion not 
only justified, but demanded such special displays 
of goodness and power in the furtherance of its 
mighty purposes, in meeting the exigencies of the 



126 THE BELATIOK OF MIKACLES 

great moral epochs of history ; exigencies which 
existed not in Nature^ "but in Man^ in that he had 
become blinded and liardened by sin, and needed 
some higher manifestation of the presence and 
power of God. If Ave can only rise to a just and ade- 
quate conception of Christ's mission among men, 
it will be easy to conceive of miracles as the fit 
and, shall I say, necessary accompaniments of such 
a ministry. In the prosecution of His sublime 
enterprise, the Divine Son of Man resorted to un- 
wonted exercises of wisdom and power, very much 
as a missionary to heathen peoples {inagna com-po- 
neve imrms) may avail himself of the deeper re- 
sources of Nature which Science has revealed, from 
an instinctive benevolence, or to carry conviction of 
his authority to the minds of those to whom he is 
sent, the effect of which may not only seein^ but in 
some sense may actually he^ miraculous to the be- 
nighted intellects of those around him. By recom- 
bining the elements and forces of ITature — as in the 
cure of certain diseases, for instance — he might work 
what to such barbarians would be sujper-liiiinan 
w^orks. A deeper and completer knowledge would 
regard such achievements as natural, of course, as 
coming within the scope of N^ature, or as resulting 
from qualities and energies potentially in Nature;, 
but they would be ^?'(^fer-natural to the savage. I 



TO THK CHRISTIAN FAITH. 127 

know the slij)pery place on wliicli I am snpposed to 
stand while indulging in siicli speculations ; and I 
am prepared to liear the reply : " That is just the ex- 
planation of the wonders you call miracles in the 
case of Christ." We may at least be thankful to the 
progress of Science for rendering such an answer, 
not only impertinent, but irrational, in the sense 
intended by our adv^ersaries. Every theory pro- 
posed to account for the miracles of the New Testa- 
ment as wrought by any sort of legerdemain, or by 
the occult knowledge and use of merely natural im- 
j)lements and resources as then or now known to 
men, has been discredited, and is now abandoned 
by all. What I have been just aiming to suggest is, 
such a conception of the miracles of Jesus as may 
reconcile us to the habit of regarding them, not as 
1^71-natural, still less as anti-rLSitiiT'dl ; but simply as 
being heyond Nature as loe hnoio it^ but not as be- 
yond. Nature as GodTcnows it; by extending the 
term into the upper realm of Divine Providence, 
for which I may claim the indorsement of Joseph 
Butler.''^ 

And, finally, in the way of qualification : let us 
aim to get an intelligent grasp upon the function 
and jpiirposG of nhirades in their relation to the 

* Analogy, p. ii. cliap. ii. 



128 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES 

Cliristian Faith. Most men of discernment liave 
been broiiglit to acknowledge that the place com- 
monly assigned to miracles in the Evidences of 
Christianity was once too high and exclusive ; while 
they are sometimes disparaged in our day as not 
only w^orthless, but as an incumbrance to the Chris- 
tian apologist. " Miracles/' it has been said, " in- 
stead of affording satisfactory proof of any thing, are 
now usually found in the dock, instead of the wdt- 
ness-box, of the court of criticism." And in ac- 
knowledgment of the partial justice of this caveat, 
Christian scholars are found discussing the crecU- 
hility of miracles, and seeking to determine the ques- 
tion whether the doctrine proves the inirade^ or the 
miracle the doctrine. Such an attitude of mind be- 
trays confusion or perversion of intellect. No such 
sharp line can be run between the various kinds of 
evidence which may be brought in proof of the 
truth of the Christian religion ; no absolute and in- 
variable precedence can be established in behalf of 
any one line of evidence over others. Justly re- 
garded, they are not merely mutually sustaining, 
but constituent parts of a complex w^liole. From 
one point of view, or in regard to one condition of 
the moral nature, the words of Jesus may be final 
and sufiicient, ^^ If any man will do his will, ho 
shall know" of the doctrine that it is of God ;" while 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 129 

to men of another temper and complexion of cha- 
racter. He may say, " Go, and tell what things ye 
hear and see." From the one point of view or 
tone of mind, we may say with Mr. Coleridge, 
" The evidences of Christanity are — Christianity ;" 
while from another, we may say with John Foster, 
" Miracles tolled the great bell of the Universe, and 
Christianity was the sermon that followed." The 
two lines of light converge to the same point. The 
snpernatural spiritual power within, flowed forth, as 
occasion called, in supernatural expressions of love 
or wisdom or might without. The life was one ; all 
its effluences were from the same source, all its pur- 
poses had the same end. We forget this, and go 
astray sometimes in the use of technical distinctions, 
or in attempting to distribute the phenomena into 
independent groups. Some of the manifestations 
of Christ's character we look upon as exceptional, 
and we call them miraculous ; but only to our lower 
and limited apprehension were they such ; not as 
involving any incoherence, or want of unity of any 
sort, in the character itself. Miracles are nothing 
but stupendous marvels when viewed alone. They 
prove nothing ; they mean nothing ; they are em- 
barrassments in the way of Faith. But viewed as 
part of a system of things having the same origin 
and inspiration and end, in the line of a continuous 



130 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES 

evolution of moral and spiritual teacliing^ as steps 
toward the great consummation which Christ came 
to accomplish, miracles take their place in the 
evolving order, as at once authenticating and au- 
thenticated " signs" of a mission which is essen- 
tially supernatural in its whole conception, execu- 
tion, and aim. We must look at the whole of the 
case^ in forming an estimate of the function and 
purpose of miracle ; at the preliminary dispensa- 
tions of God's wisdom and grace ; at the exigencies 
of time, and place, and moral condition, when and 
in w^hich the signs and wonders are alleged to have 
been wrought ; trying, above all, to take in some- 
thing like an adequate conception of the person and 
office of Christ ; of the breadth and elevation and 
simplicity and beauty of His character ; of the manij 
festly exceptional place. He fills in the moral econo- 
my of the world, and in the imfolding of the plan 
of God, and of the solemn and everlasting issues of 
His life and death. Take all into account, and what 
appeared to be incidental discrepancies, perhaps, 
before will resolve themselves into order and har- 
mony ; seemingly discordant facts will be found 
mutually sustaining ; while devious lines of evi- 
dence will be seen to blend into one mighty and 
transcendent testimony to the truth of historical 
Christianity. 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 131 

In tlie statement of these precantions, I have in- 
dicated, and to some extent defined, what I hold to 
be the just " Relation of Miracles to the Chris- 
tian Faith." By the Faith, I nnderstand the great 
■facts and doctrines of the New Testament. It is 
no part of my task to state the grounds npon wdiich 
these are supposed to rest. They are snch, at least, 
as cannot be fairly passed by as if in contempt by 
the apostles of the j)reYalent nnbelief. Yet this is 
the style in w^hich the evidence brought to sustain 
the credibility of the Christian miracles is common- 
ly treated in our day. Tliose who claim to speak in 
disproof of such credibility, in the name of modern 
Science, presume to ignore generally the data de- 
rived from other spheres of thought and investiga- 
tion, and the question is therefore discussed and 
hastily decided according to the canons and j)ostu- 
lates of physical philosophy merely. It is assumed 
that the witness of Nature, or of professed interpre- 
tations of Nature which we call Science, is exhaus- 
tive and final, which to the intelligent Christian 
apologist betrays a willful perverseness. It is sure- 
ly open to us to demand that the case shall not be 
closed against us in this arbitrary and offensive way. 
If any evidence of a counter or even qualifying 
character and tendency can establish a presumptive 
right to be heard, it can not be fairly refused on the 



132 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES 

assumption of the exclusive validity of the criteria 
of Physical Science. For not only may those criteria 
be made to do good service in support of other and 
o^^posite conclusions, but the question is one in 
wliich Spiritual Philosophy and Historical Criticism 
are profoundly interested, and to the just determi- 
nation of which they profess their ability to bring 
indispensable testimony. We simply say, let it be 
received, and ]et it be well and honestly weighed, 
and Christian Faith will abide the issue. 

I am not required, in the prosecution of my pre- 
sent purpose, to attempt even a hasty survey of all 
the varied evidences which conspire to demonstrate 
the supernatural claims of Christianity. I assumed 
the substantial truth of the Gospel histories as a 
postulate in the debate, and this is guaranteed by 
evidence as valid and conclusive for its own ends 
as the evidence upon which the conclusions of Sci- 
ence repose. Criticism may require us to dispense 
with some things in the received Eecord, but they 
are of insignificant value. " The foundation stand- 
eth sure,'^ our adversaries being witness. The mu- 
tually exclusive or destructive attempts of Paulus, 
Strauss, Schleiermacher, and Eenan to divest the 
Christ of the Gospels of all supernatural attributes 
may suifice to prove that the great problem can not 
be thus solved ; that we can not consistently retain 



TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 133 

faith in the transcendent excellence and beauty of 
the character of Jesns as a man, and dismiss all 
higlier claims as ^* cnnningly devised fables.'' We 
are compelled to admit a snpernatnral element to 
explain the natm^al ; the liuman facts in the life 
and character of Jesus can only be rendered con- 
sistent by the admission of claims that are essen- 
tially Divine. The Gospels are reduced to a mass 
of fragmentary incongruities Avhen we have elimi- 
nated all the elements which an infidel rationalism 
rejects. '* Stubbornly and obstinately the narra- 
tives refuse to be so dealt with." We cannot thus 
undo the subtle interpenetrations of admitted fact 
and alleged fiction in the f om^f old Biography. The 
two are so organically and vitally blended that they 
can never be fairly disentangled. We may cut the 
knot ; it can never be untied by the most relentless 
criticism. The admission of fiction discredits essen- 
tial facts ; while if the claim be once allowed that 
Christ was at least "a teacher sent from God," or 
such a teacher as the Evangelists portray, all the 
marvelous words and works ascribed to Him in their 
writings gather round the image of His person in a 
vital coherence and harmonious order. An interior 
unity reveals itself in the records of His life, which 
can never be accounted for by the coarse imputa- 
tion of fraud; nor by ascribing it to the invention 



134 MIRACLES AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 

of a wonder-loving fanaticism. The cliaracter of 
Christ, with only the lineaments allowed by a hos- 
tile criticism, is the one standing miracle which au- 
thenticates or which renders credible all the signs 
and wonders of the Gospels, while the signal revo- 
lution whicli Christianity wrought in the moral 
world within a generation of its birth confirms the 
sublime claim, to whicli eighteen centuries have 
added an unbroken testimony, and of which living 
Christendom is the visible and stupendous monu- 
ment. 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 



BY 

WILLIAM R. HUNTINGTON", D.D., 

Rector op All Saints' Church, Worcester, Mass. 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 



'' , . . tlie Scripture can not be broken." — John 10 : 35. 

That which Christ here says can not be done, a 
thousand forces in our day are laboring to accom- 
plish. To break the Scripture, to dismember the 
body of revelation, to tear into a multitude of 
unconnected parts a volume which the common in- 
stinct of Christians has hitherto affirmed to be one 
book, is the present endeavor of those who think 
it high time for intelligent men to be starting in 
search of a new religion. 

The line of attack is well chosen. To the casual 
eye, appearances more or less favor the opinion that 
the Bible is simply the classic literature of a people 
whose line of thinking lay in the direction of reli- 
gion. 

How can oneness, it is urged, be attributed to 
a collection of historical, poetical, and epistola- 
ry writings, which confessedly range, as to their 
date of composition, over a period of many centu- 
ries, and which are known to have come from the 



138 THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 

hands of at least forty or fifty different contribu- 
tors ? 

With many minds, the mere statement of the 
proposition is the ref utal of it. The thesis strikes 
them as involving absurdity in its very terms. And 
yet, in the face of this incredulous and, as it would 
seem, reasonably incredulous spirit. Christians have 
the boldness to maintain that, notwithstanding its 
wide sweep of dialects and styles and topics, the 
Bible does possess unity in the very most complete 
and thorough sense the word can bear. 

Before undertaking to investigate the grounds of 
this conviction entertained by Christians, let us first 
attempt to form a clear notion of what we mpan 
when we claim for any book the characteristic of 
unity. That a certain number of printed pages are 
contained between two covers may justify a libra- 
rian in saying, " This is a book ;" but it would not 
justify a reader in saying, " This is one book." 

Take a collection of pamphlets, on various dis- 
connected topics, which somebody, for convenience' 
sake, perhaps because the pages were of the same 
length and breadth, has had bound up into a single 
volume — shall we say of these, that they are one 
book ? 'Not if we wish to use language accurately. 
The only unity the pamphlets have acquired by be- 
ing stitched together is of a purely external and ma- 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 139 

terial sort. They have been made into one volume, 
but not into one book. 

Suppose, now, another case. A writer, who has 
contributed essays on various subjects to literary 
periodicals, makes up his mind to collect and pub- 
lish them. He does so. What shall we say of the 
result ? Is it one book ? Yes ; in a certain sense, 
it may fairly be called so. It has one important 
element of unity — unity of authorship. A single 
mind has conceived and wrought out all that the 
volume contains. This was not true of the bound 
pamphlets. 

Take still another case. Here are various wri- 
ters, who have a common interest in some particular 
subject. We will suppose it to be a very large 
subject — so large that a single mind would scarcely 
be able to grasp all the details of it. These asso- 
ciates, therefore, join forces, and divide the work 
among them. How shall we characterize the pro- 
duct of their combined efforts ? Is it one book ? I 
answer as before — yes, in a partial sense, it is. The 
book has this one important element of unity — 
oneness of subject. The various authors have all 
concentrated their attention, by common consent, 
upon a single field. 

Suffer me one more instance. Suppose the case 
of a man who has made up his mind to write a Avork 



liO THE ONENESS OF SCKIPTUKE. 

upon some topic wliicli he lias long studied and 
thoroughly mastered. lie arranges his materials. 
He lays out his plan. lie determines how much 
space he will assign to this branch of his subject, 
how nmch to that. lie is as careful as a painter 
w^ould be about his lights and shades, determined 
that his work shall be symmetrical, well balanced, 
evenly done ; he sees the end from the begin- 
ning, and, while carefully elaborating each separate 
feature and limb, never allows himself to forget for 
a moment the desired effect of the perfect whole. 
Now, what shall we say of this book ? Certainly 
we can say no less of it than that it possesses the 
very perfection of literary unity. The bound 
pamphlets had only a material oneness. The book 
of miscellaneous essays could claim unity of a better 
sort — that of authorship. The encyclopaedia, com- 
piled by A^arious hands, possessed another, but still 
partial, kind of unity — the unity of subject. In the 
case last supposed, and only in that, do we find 
unity complete. This is, in very deed and truth, 
not only one volume, but one book. 

The Christian believer, as I have said, claims for 
the Scriptures this perfection of unity. They have, 
he declares, one author and one subject — their au- 
thor, God ; their subject, God's revelation of Him- 
self in Jesus Christ, 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 141 

The names commonly given to the Scriptures are 
indicative of this confidence in their unity. We 
call them the '^ Word of God/' thus signifying our 
faith in their common origin. We call them '^the 
Bible/' because, although this word might mean, 
and in early English did mean, any book, we count 
the Word of God pre-eminently worthy to be call- 
ed, of all books, the book. Such is the Christian's 
claim. Can it be substantiated ? For the handling 
of this question, .we are here to-night. Let us take 
up the inquiry in earnest, and prosecute it without 
fear. 

I remark, then, in the first place, that the Chris- 
tian's faith in the unity of the Bible rests on the ba- 
sis of a conviction that lies deeper still — namely, on 
the belief that human history has unity, and that a 
never-failing Providence ordereth all things, both 
in heaven and earth. Only with those who are 
willing to concede this postulate will any argument 
for the oneness of the Scriptures carry much 
weight. 

Three views of history are possible, and only 
three. The first is the purely atheistic view. We 
may look at the events of the far-reaching past in 
the same mood in which we watch the motion of the 
tangled burden of branches, roots, and drift-wood 
under which a swollen river, in a spring freshet, 



142 THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTUEE. 

hurries to the sea. History is a mere chaos of f acts, 
linked to each other in no definite relationship. 
Monarchs have succeeded monarchs ; dynasties have 
risen, flourished, and sunk into decay ; lands have 
been invaded ; institutions overthrown ; cities build- 
ed and destroyed ; but in it all there has been no 
progress ; no evolution of a creative thought ; no 
carrying out of an original purpose. According 
to this view, the chronicle is the only legitimate 
form of history. Man may keep his diary, but 
must not dream of writing his autobiography. 
He may accumulate his facts, but woe be to him if 
he ventures upon an interpretation of them. 

A step, and only a step, in advance of the simply 
godless historians stand those who are willing to ad- 
mit, nay, who are forward to claim that there is an 
order observable in human events, but who argue 
that the order is of such a sort as can only be under- 
stood in the light of census reports and geographi- 
cal statistics. 

The historical philosophers of this school discern 
not only " a tide in the aft'airs of men," but a law^ of 
tides ; and for the chronicle substitute the almanac. 
But when we ask them w^ho ordained the laws of 
sociology, whose are the thoughts which political 
economy strives to formulate, they fall back on the 
ancient dogma, " There is no God." 



THE ONENESS OF SCHIPTUHE. 143 

Again, there are those who base their view of 
history upon a dogma the opposite of that jnst 
quoted. They start with the persuasion, " Doubt- 
less there is a God that judgeth the earth.'' Set- 
ting out in this spirit^ they find it easy to disco- 
ver that He whose existence is the first article of 
their creed has not left Himself witliout witness in 
the world. Way-marks are abundant to tell them 
where this Living God has passed. And gradually, 
so strong does this persuasion of the presence of that 
Hand in historv become that, even when faith is 
tried and confidence shaken, the same instinct that 
prompts the astronomer to believe in the universal 
prevalence of Newton's law^, in the face of some 
phenomena that seem to make against it, the same 
sort of instinct assures the devout student, 

" That God is on the field when He 
Is most invisible." 

"Well then, among the facts that confront the 
theist — I do not say the Christian, for I am aiming 
to put forward an argument that shall have weight 
with all who confess any faith in a personal, self- 
conscious God — among the facts that confront the 
theist, be he Christian or non-Christian, and clamor 
for an interpretation, are conspicuously two. 

The first of these is the existence, in ancient 



14:4 THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTUKE. 

times^ of a single nation devoted to the worship 
and service of a God to whom were attributed unity, 
conscious personality, omnipresence, and holiness. 
The modern mind rather begrudges the Hebrew 
race its title of " the chosen people." There 
is a growing indisposition to allow that lie who 
made of one blood all nations of men can possibly 
have cared for any particular race more favorably 
than for another. But if there be, as there un- 
doubtedly is, some law of selection ruling in natural 
history, why is it unreasonable to hold that God 
has followed an analogous principle of election in 
spiritual history? Be that as it may, modern 
thought professes, and rightly, a profound regard 
for facts. ]^ow, it is, I believe, an acknowledged 
historical fact, account for it as we may, that of the 
various peoples of antiquity, the Hebrew was the 
only one whose tradition of God guarded with 
equal and impartial jealousy the four central attri- 
butes I just now named — unity, conscious per- 
sonality, omnipresence, and holiness. Of the na- 
tions around, there were many that believed in the 
omnipresence of Deity ; but they either sacrificed 
the divine unity by multiplying gods, or they lost 
their hold upon the divine personality by wor- 
shiping the all-soul diffused through nature ; or 
they robbed the Eternal of His attribute of holi- 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 145 

ness, by blotting the distinction between the pure 
and the impure, the clean and the unclean. 
** To the Hebrew only was it given to know Jeho- 
vah as the One Lord, present in nature while yet 
throned above all worlds ; glorious in holiness, fear- 
ful in praises, doing w^onders. Well might the hea- 
then sorcerer exclaim, as he stood on the mountain- 
top, gazing with reluctant admiration at the ordered 
encampment of the pilgrim host, "How goodly are 
thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel! 
Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he 
that curseth thee." 

The consistency with which this stern, uncom- 
promising theism is clung to, throughout the Old 
Testament, has something very striking about it. 
'No doubt there is an abundance of wickedness re- 
corded there ; apostasy from the pure faith is fre- 
quent ; treason against the unseen King continually 
repeats itself ; but every now and then the voices of 
the men of God, like the chorus in the Greek tra- 
gedy, utter their comment, and the goodly fellow- 
ship of the prophets make themselves heard, as the 
spokesmen of the Lord Jehovah. 

And this consistency of tone and spirit, pervad- 
ing so many seemingly disconnected writings, is the 
more remarkable when we observe that not only in 
what they say, but also in what they are careful not 



14G THE ONENESS OF SCJilPTUEE. 

to say, do these writers harmonize with one another. 
" The silence of Scripture," as has been well re- 
marked, is sometimes as eloquent as its speech. A 
single reference must suffice. 

The belief in the reality of magic was almost 
universal among the Eastern nations during the 
whole period covered by the Old Testament. Now, 
if the notion that the various books of the Bible 
embody the opinions that were generally prevalent 
at the times wlien they were written were true, or 
if Coleridge's dictum, borrowed from Germany, 
tliat the Old Testament canon is simply the remains 
of the Hebrew Chaldaic literature, prior to the time 
of Ezra"'^ — if either of these assumptions were cor- 
rect, then we should expect to find in these writings 
what we do find in the Talmud and the Koran — 
plentiful allusions to the peril of magical influences. 
"But," says Mr. Reginald Poo'le, one of the most 
eminent of living authorities, ''it is a distinctive 
characteristic of the Bible that, from first to last, it 
warrants' no such trust or dread. In the Psalms, 
the most personal of all the books of. Scripture, 
there is no prayer to be protected against magical 
influences. The believer prays to be delivered from 
every kind of evil that could hurt the body or the 



■^''Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit.'* Woi'.ks (Shedd's 
Edition), vol, v., p. 612. 



THE ONENESS OF SCKIPTURE. 147 

soul, but he says nothing of the machinations of sor- 
cerers. Here, as elsewhere, magic is passed by, or 
is mentioned only to be condemned. Let those," 
^he adds, 'Svho affirm that they see in the Psahns 
only Imman piety, and in Job and Ecclesiastes 
merely human philosophy, explain the absence in 
them and thronghont the Scriptures of the expres- 
sion of superstitious feelings that are inherent in the 
Shemite mind."^ 

This, then, is the first fact to be accounted for in 
framing our philosophy of history — the existence in 
remote antiquity of a separate people, who held un- 
flinchingly to a conception of the nature of the God- 
liead.Avhich has stood the test of theological criti- 
cism through all subsequent time. 

The second fact is the phenomenon we call mo- 
dern civilization. Great efforts have been made of 
late to dej)reciate the share Christianity has had in 
moulding society into its present shaj)e. We are 
cautioned against allowing our sense of indebtedness 
to Judea to blind us to the claims of Greece and 
Home and Egypt on our gratitude. f 

*Dr. Smitli's ''Dictionary of the Bible." Art., Magic. Am. 
Ed., vol. ii.,p. 1742. 

f John Stuart Mill '' On Liberty." Am. Ed., p. 95. See also 
in a similar strain Leckey's '' History of European Morals," vol. 
ii., p. 149. 



lis THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 

Yet, when we come to study the marvelous ad- 
vances in almost every department of knowledge 
and art by which onr times are distinguished, it is 
impossible not to notice the fact that the progress in 
question has been almost exclusively confined to 
what are known as the "" Christian "nations. 

The Arabic achievements furnish no real excep- 
tion to this statement, for, as has been acutely ob- 
served, Islam has more the nature of a heresy than 
of a false religion. Of the twelve hundred million 
inhabitants of the globe, only about one fourth part 
are nominally Christian, but among this fourth 
part, this fraction of the race, is to be found almost 
if not quite exclusively that spirit of progress 
which is our modern boast. Asia and Africa, with 
their eight hundred millions, stand still, as they 
have stood still for centuries. Europe and America, 
Christian and enlightened, press forward with a 
restless energy and steadfast purpose, before which 
the gates of seemingly unconquerable difficulty fall 
down. Explain it as we will, this is the simple, 
bare, statistical fact. The Christian nations are on 
the march, the heathen nations are at the halt. 
Christendom is hopeful, buoyant, aggressive ; hea- 
thendom, despondent, stationary, dead. 

"With our eyes fresh from their momentary glance 
at these two prominent facts in the world's history. 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 149 

we turn now to the question immediately before ns 
— tlie unity of the Scripture. What is the Bible ? 
What does it profess to be ? Let us open it and as- 
certain. We iind two principal divisions, called 
Testaments, Old and l^ew\ They used once to be 
known as " Instruments," and perhaps it would 
have been well if they could have kept the name 
till now, for it is one that seems to make the two 
hemispheres of revelation explain themselves as 
God's modes of handling His world. Lord Bacon 
entitled the work whicli was destined to revolution- 
ize the scientific methods of his day, Novum 
Orgamun^ but none would have been more for- 
ward than that great thinker to confess that his 
new instrument could not have been forged but 
for the old instrument that had preceded it. It 
was from the vantage-ground of the ancient learn- 
ing that the modern took its departure. And so, 
as w^e shall see in the case of tliese two instruments 
in the one Bible, there is no real breaking of the 
Scripture — the Old is simply parent of the New. 
For look at it ! These Testaments taken together 
give us what no other existing volume undertakes to 
give — namely, an interpretation of those two com- 
manding facts to which I have referred as towering 
up, head and shoulders, above all the other pheno- 
mena of history. The Old Testament tells us how 



150 THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 

and for what purpose tlie tradition of the holy God 
was kept alive. The Kew Testament tells lis how 
and for what purpose the foundations of Christen- 
dom were laid. Discard these two Scriptures, and 
you lose your chief materials for moulding a phi- ' 
losophy of history. Deny their connection, and 
straightway you make them unintelligible. 

We touch here the pivot-point of our inquiry, for 
w^e find ourselves in the presence of the test ques- 
tion, which, sooner or later, in every full discussion 
of social and religious problems, forces itself to the 
front : What think ye of Christ ? We see Him to 
be plainly the one and only subject of the later Scrip- 
ture ; is He also, what He resolutely and steadfastly 
claimed to be, the one and only subject of the elder 
Scripture too? Does that despised and rejected 
One really hold in His hand the key to the secret of 
the ages ? Is the angel of the Apocalypse in the 
right when he declares that " the testimony of Jesus 
is the spirit of prophecy "? The answer we give to 
these questions depends wholly upon our willing- 
ness or unwillingness to concede to Jesus Christ 
the right to speak on spiritual matters " as one 
having authority." If we have made up our minds 
to regard the Son of Mary as nothing more than a 
heavenly-minded, high-souled man, a teacher of 
purer morals than were generally accepted in His 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 151 

day, a leader of religious tliought among His fellow- 
countrymen, tliougli of sucli commanding stature 
that His influence has extended itself to men of 
countries other than His own — if this be the rate at 
which we hold Him, then nothing will seem to us 
more irrational and absurd than to suppose that 
we are to look for supernatural references to Him 
in a collection of old books written centuries before 
His birth, by men who had no concert of action, and 
who were manifestly bent on speaking out Avhat 
they had to say to the people of their own times. 
But if, on the other hand, one has become persuaded 
that such a view of the matter is as shallow as it 
is intelligible ; if one has become persuaded that 
Christianity must be something more than a happy 
accident to have accomplished wdiat it has accom- 
plished in the world ; if one has become persuaded 
that Jesus Christ was not so much the founder of a 
new religion as He was and is the centre and heart 
of al] religion that is true, then it will not be difii- 
cult, but, ratlier, very easy to believe that for the 
coming of this Eevealer into an untaught world 
a careful preparation w^as required, and that for an 
adequate and faithful record of this educating pro- 
cess, provision should have been made. 

This willingness to risk every thing that is essen- 
tial to Christianity, the integrity of its Scriptures, 



152 THE ONENESS OF SCKIPTURE. 

tlie authority of its creeds, the perpetuity of its 
very structure, upon the simple word of Christ 
speaking to us out of the Gospels, used to be depre- 
cated by cautious people as a too hazardous v^enture 
of faith. But sooner or later, " Wisdom is justified 
of all her children." In a recent work on Systema- 
tic Theology, which probably embodies the most 
conservative thought of our times, it is significant 
to find these words : " After all, Christ is the 
great object of the Christian's faith. We believe 
Him, and we believe every thing else on His 
authority."^ 

We have been dwelling thus far upon the Bible's 
unity of subject. Fewer words will suflice in treat- 
ing of its unity of authorship. You see how the 
one conclusion hinges upon and is necessitated by 
the other. From the unity of subject, we can reason 
backward with safety to the unity of authorship ; 
for when we have once satisfied ourselves that " the 
Scripture cannot be broken," that to snap its inter- 
lacing threads of connection would be like cutting 
the nerves, tendons, and cartilage that knit the joints 
of a living body, we find it impossible to account 
for so startling a fact save by supposing that from 
the beginning, one mind planned and one eye fore- 
saw the whole. 



^Dr. Hodge, " Systematic Theology " -vol. i., p. 167. 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 153 

You see also the great subsidiary advantages of 
this method, for it has enabled us to steer wholly 
clear of the petty entanglements with which the 
question of the Bible's authority has been needlessly 
but too often encumbered. Let a man pin his faith 
to some special philosophy of inspiration, and he is 
at the mercy of the first unfriendly critic, who can 
prove to him beyond a doubt that there are errors 
in the chronology of the Pentateuch, or discrepan- 
cies in the Gospel narratives. But he who grounds 
his confidence in the Bible as the word of God on 
the simple faith that there is a God, and that He 
has spoken to us through Jesus Christ, will stand 
in no dread of the microscopic fault-finder with his 
arithmetic and slate. The roots of that man's re- 
verence for the Bible strike down too deep into the 
soil for the tree to be disturbed by every adverse 
wind of doctrine. The trifling inaccuracies charged 
against the Scriptures, should they be proved, 
will no more shake such a believer's trust in their 
divine authorship than the detection of a blemish 
here and there in the stone-work of St. Paul's 
Cathedral would convince him that Sir Christo- 
pher Wren did not design the building. 

We ought as churchmen to thank God for 
the large wisdom which guided the Anglican re- 
formers in their treatment of this subject. They 



154 THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 

were content to receive and to hand on Holy 
Scripture as containing " all things necessary to 
salvation."^ 

It was reserved for later and lesser theologians 
to frame those artificial distinctions between kinds 
and degrees of inspiration from which men's intel- 
ligence has recoiled. 

The view that has been now presented may be 
called the providential theory of the growth and 
completion of the Scriptures. 

That it presupposes in the inquirer antecedent 
convictions as a groundwork ought to be no argu- 
ment against it, for the subject is one to which of 
necessity every student will bring prepossessions of 
some sort. It would be hard indeed to frame a 
plea for the Bible that would convince an atheist. 
Moreover, it is to be questioned whether those who 
demand absolute demonstration as the condition of 
their accepting a religious faith will ever reach the 
object of their search in this world of uncertainties 
and probabilities. 

But if I were to choose our Lord's method of il- 
lustrating truth by parables— a mode of teaching too 
much depreciated in our times, f although never 

* Article VI. 

f What Mr. Gladstone lately said of Bisliop Butler, in con- 
nection witli his doctrine of probable evidence, might with 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPT L'RE. 155 

were the aids to it more abundant — were I seek- 
ing to enforce my tliouglit by an analogy, I would 
ask you to consider so common an object as a piece 
of brandling coral. Here it is in your hands. It 
has been broken off and brought home by some 
sailor from the Pacific. Look at it ; observe the 
curious and symmetrical arrangement of its parts. 
It is not a clumsy, ill-shaped thing at all. You get 
from it the same impression of beauty of form that 
the limbs of a tree, or a stag's antlers, or a group of 
rock crystals convey. But consider by what sort 
of a process of growth this marvelous result has 
been attained. In reality, there is a wide difference 
between this and the branches of the tree or the 
antlers of the stag. They grow by a continuous 
process and under the impulse of a single law of 
life. But how did this spray of coral come to be 
what it is? Ten thousand times ten thousand and 
thousands of thousands of little insects lived and 
died there, each in its separate and appointed place, 
each heedless of every thing save the cool sea-water 
moving in and out, and yet there was not one of 
them which did not serve a far-off purpose. 



equal trntli be said of liim as the great advocate of analogical 
reasoning in tlieology : '* Oli ! that this age knew the treasure 
it possesses in him and neglects !" (Letter to Mr. James 
Knowles, Nov. 9, 1873.) 



156 THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 

All the while a divine law of unity was govern- 
ing and using for its own ends the lower law of in- 
dividual life, and making each tiny polyp minister, 
without knowing it, to the perfection of the last 
result. And so in this matter of the unity of the 
Scriptures, the many writers were but the under- 
workmen, carrying out with more or less of conscious 
co-operation the purpose of the great Designer. 
Give all the credit to the coral insects they deserve. 
They did their patient work, and did it well ; but 
not to them does the meed of authorship belong. 
That rests with God. He planned. He guided, He 
made perfect. 

To prove to you, beyond the possibility of a doubt, 
the unity of the Bible, I have acknowledged to be 
impossible. But let me add that I did not under- 
take this task. My Avhole ambition and aim to- 
night has been to show how every man must prove 
it for himself. I do not believe that any thought- 
ful person whose doubts have been once awakened 
will ever acknowledge that the Scripture can not be 
broken, imlesshe has first become persuaded that the 
claim of Jesus Christ to be the Saviour of the world 
is true. I do believe that when a man has hon- 
estly and from the heart confessed this faith, it is 
then easy for him to see how the various parts of 
Scripture group themselves about one common cen- 



THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 157 

tre. Such a believer will not be content with 
merely groping about the pages of the Old Testa- 
ment to see if here or there he can pick up some 
sentence that may be construed into a prediction 
of the Messiah ; rather he will be led to see how the 
whole experience of the people of God, from be- 
ginning to end, their bondage, their exodus, their 
wilderness life, their ritual worship, their strug- 
gles, their dissensions, their captivities, all had a 
part in the grand work of preparation by which 
God was drawing on " the f ulhiess of time.'' But 
to see all this is to discern that the Bible has unity 
of subject, and to discern the Bible's unity of sub- 
ject is to concede its unity of authorship ; for it can- 
not be by a coincidence that such a multitude of 
voices join in one harmonious song; there must be 
a controlling voice behind on which they lean. 

Again, I remind you of the crucial question, 
" Whom say ye that I am ? " 

If we reply with that disciple whose confession 
won for him the proud title of the Rock, " Thou 
art the Christ, the Son of the living God," then 
nothing will be easier that to accept the Bible as 
the biography of this God-man, the true hero of 
earth's story. But if to that solemn question we 
make answer thus, " We know thee not who 
thou art, nor do we greatly care to know," then 



158 THE ONENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 

nothing will be more natm^al than to see in the 
Bible only the relics of a religion that has spent its 
force and is drawing to its death, a praiseworthy 
but obsolete effort of the oriental mind to find its 
God. Seeing then what tremendous issues hang 
upon the question, " What think ye of Christ V* shall 
any one venture to treat it as a matter of no conse- 
quence? Nay, my dear friends, if that question 
be still lying unsettled in your mind, grapple it, 
wrestle with it, pray over it^ until, by God's grace, 
you find an answer, and an answer by which you 
are willing to abide. So shall you solve not only 
this problem of the Bible's unity, but many another 
problem also ; and depend upon it, the solution thus 
reached through the pathway of a heart-experience 
will be worth more to you than any you could pos- 
sibly find made ready to your hand. 



KoTE. — Since this sermon was preached, I have 
seen for the first time the following paragraph at 
the close of Canon Westcott's JSihle in the 
Church.^ I append it here partly for the sake of 
bringing it under the eye of readers who might not 
otherwise fall in w^ith it, and partly because of the 
pleasure it has given me to find my own convic- 

^ The Bible m tlie Churcli, p. 296. 



THE ONENESS OF SCBIPTURE. 159 

tioiis, as expressed in the sermon, coincident with 
those of a man whose judgment and authority in 
such a question are worth vastly more than my own : 
" In a word, the history of the Bible is an epi- 
tome of the history of the Church. Both came to 
their full form, slowly, silently, surely, by the com- 
bination of manifold elements. Both grew by the 
action of an informing power, and Avere not con- 
structed from without by any foreign force. Both 
include treasures new and old, of which now this, 
now that is needed for the instruction of men. 
Both have been overlaid by superstitious additions, 
both have been injured by an idolatrous reverence; 
but in both there is a life which makes itself felt, 
and refuses to be bound in one shape. The Bible, 
no less than the Church, is Holy, Catholic, and 
Apostolic : Holy, for they who wrote it were 
moved by the Holy Spirit; Catholic, for it em- 
braces in essence every type of Christian truth 
which has gained entrance among men : Apostolic, 
for its limits are not extended beyond that first gene- 
ration to which was committed the charge of preach- 
ing the Gospel in the fullness of its original power." 



IMMORTALITY. 



BY THE 

EIGHT REV. THOMAS MARCH CLARK, D.D., LL.D. 



BISHOP OF KHODE ISLAND. 



IMMOKTALITY. 



This mortal must put on immortality. — 1 Con. 15 : 53. 

If it is difficult for a man to believe in liis own per- 
sonal imniortalitv, it is equally so to conceive of a 
final cessation of being. The idea of absolute an- 
nihilation is not only abhorrent to the feelings, but 
it is also contradictory to our instincts and intui- 
tions. And if all life is bounded by a span, we can 
not help asking, how did this notion of an immor- 
tal existence ever come to us ? If it is a mere de- 
lusion, it is the only lie that has been incorporated 
into the texture of our humanity. Every other in- 
stinct and intuition has something objective which 
corresponds to it. The body finds food some- 
wdiere for the gratification of all its appetites ; the 
ear was made for hearing, and the air is full of mu- 
sic ; the eye Avas made to see, and form and color 
meet it at every glance ; the heart was made to feel, 
and it is continually touched by experiences, which 
fill it with sorrow or with joy ; the brain was made 
to be the instrument of thought, and the material 



161 IMMORTALITY. 

upon wliicli it exercises itself is as varied as it is 
abundant ; the spirit of man seems to have been 
made for immortality ; it craves after an unending 
existence ; and if it could be proved beyond a doubt 
that it must perish with the destruction of the tab- 
ernacle whicli it inhabits, there would go up from 
every tribe and nation one universal burst of exe- 
cration against the Beiug wlio created the soul. 

'' But," we are told, " the soul was never created 
at all — it is only the development of one of the 
higher species of force, and the result of a peculiar 
organization. Apart from that physi(*al organiza- 
tion, we can not conceive of man's existence ; and 
as the spiritual part of our being originates w^ith the 
physical, and is subject to all its contingencies, so 
the actual dissolution of the one must be accom- 
panied with the destruction of the other." 

But then we find in man this essential difference 
w^hich distinguishes him from all other organized 
beings — there is in him a free, automatic, intelli- 
gent power, by which he can control his own move- 
ments and regulate his own development. In all 
other forms of earthly being, the organism is su- 
preme ; but man's noblest triumphs are achieved in 
defiance of his physical organization. And when 
all his nerves are tingling with fiery passion, and his 
heart throbbing with strong desire, and his blood 



IM]\tORTALITY. 165 

coursing witli liglitning sj^eed tlirongli liis veins, 
and his aching brain impelling him to yield, and in 
the majesty of his ma^nhood he rises np, and says, 
^'I will not yield!" then he comes to the con- 
sciousness of his immortality, for he feels that 
there is something in him which can defy and sub- 
due the body, and is not subject to all the miserable 
contingencies by Avhich it is controlled. 

" That may sound somewhat grand," is the reply ; 
" but after all, this notion of immortality must be a 
delusion, because we can form no actual conception 
of the future life ; a disembodied soul, as it is some- 
times called, is a simple nonentity. It has no func- 
tions, no caj)acities, no organs, and of course no lo- 
cality. Men talk as if they had some idea of a spir- 
itual existence, but they have no definite thoughts 
about the matter. The forms and analogies of the 
natural world are merely transferred to a domain 
where they cease to have any significance." 

This is not an argument, but only an appeal to 
the imagination. What conception has an infant of 
the experiences that are awaiting him in his matu- 
rity? It might be worse than useless for us to 
know any thing very definite as to the outward 
conditions of our future life, and I think it is very 
doubtful whether there are any terms in the lan- 
,guage that we now use capable of conveying to the 



166 IMMORTALITY. 

mind a distinct idea of those conditions. Even after 
we have entered the next stage of being, it is very 
probable that we shall require the same gradual 
training and experience, in order to comprehend the 
new modes of existence which await us there, that 
are needed*in tlie process of our education here. 
When the boundary line has been passed, and we 
find ourselves standing in the presence of eternal 
realities, the veil may be lifted very slowly, and the 
glories of our immortality revealed to us, only as 
w^e have strength of vision to endure their bright- 
ness. 

"But," adds the objector, "if man is immortal, 
would there not have been such palpable, unques- 
tionable proof of the fact, that no possible room 
would have been left for a doubt 'i Why is it that 
so many who are really anxious to believe, and even 
crave after an immortality, are left in such wretched 
suspense, and find nothing to satisfy them ? If there 
is another world, where we are to dwell hereafter, 
and where those are now living who once went in 
and out with us over the same threshold, why does 
it seem so far off, so im23alpable, so unreal ?" 

There may be good reasons for keeping the future 
life, to a certain degree, remote from us and inac- 
cessible, inasmuch as this removes the temptation 
that might otherwise beset us to busy ourselves with 



IMJVIORTALITY. 167 

curious speculations about the spiritual world, in- 
stead of giving our minas to the faithful discharge 
of the duties that pertain to our present life. Our 
work is here, our responsibilities all centre here, and 
the best preparation we can make for our f utiu^e life 
is to be had in doing the work well which God as- 
signs to us here on earth. And no one who is not 
thus fitting himself for immortality, deserves or can 
expect to be delivered from anxiety and doubt. 
Gloom and fear must haunt the man who always 
dwells amid the clouds and mists of the valley, 
breathing the thick, contaminated atmosphere of 
earth ; but only let him climb to the mountain-top, 
where the heavens are clear, and the air is pure, 
then all his anxieties and doubts will vanish. He 
will see the bright towers of the New Jerusalem, 
and hear the echo of its silver bells. He who lives 
by faith in the Son of God, and obeys His holy law, 
can not doubt that his Saviour will admit him into 
an everlasting habitation, w^hen his Avork here is 
■finished. 

" This is life eternal — to know Thee, the only 
truiB God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." 
" Faith is the substance," the basis, " of things 
hoped for, the evidence of things -not seen." It is 
evidence, because^ with the believer, the eternal life 



163 IMMORTALITY. 

lias already Legim. lie enters upon liis immortal- 
ity Avlien lie becomes identified with Christ. 

" But," it is again asked, " if the proof of an eter- 
nal life rests primarily npon divine revelation, how 
are we to account for tlie fact that, in the earlier 
dispensations, as, for instance, in the case of tlie 
Mosaic economy, tliere is no distinct and definite 
doctrine of immortality disclosed to man ? Why 
was not this fact incorporated into the law, as it 
was then revealed ?" 

In the first j)lace, that was a civil code, intended 
for the regulation of national as well as of private 
affairs, and there would have been an obvious im- 
propriety in appealing to future rewards and piin- 
isliments as the sanction of a civil law. 

Again, this was not needed. The doctrine of a 
future life had never been questioned, and was an 
element in tlie popular traditional belief. The pa- 
triarchs supposed themselves to have occasional in- 
tercourse with spiritual beings and angelic inhabi- 
tants of other worlds, and believed that, when they 
died, they Avould rejoin those w^ho had gone before 
them. 

There was another reason for the silence of Moses 
on this subject, growing out of the fact that the 
doctrine of immortality among the Egyptians had as- 
sumed such prominence that it interfered with the 



IMMORTALITY. 169 

welfare and progress of society, made men indiffer- 
ent to the discharge of their secular duties, while it 
exerted no salutary influence upon their character. 
The building of costly tombs absorbed the wealth 
that might have been devoted to the service of 
the living, and the material which should have been 
used to clothe the poor was expended in w^rap- 
pings for the mummied dead. "With them, the im- 
mortal lifje was regarded only as a continuation of 
earthly enjoyments and pursuits ; and when, at 
their feasts, they placed a skeleton at the table, it was 
not as a solemn reminder of the vanity of all earth- 
ly things, but as a guest from the other world, with 
whom they expected to sit down hereafter to a more 
sumptuous repast. The doctrine of immortality 
with which the Israelites had become familiar in 
Egypt possessed no high moral or religious ele- 
ment, and at the time of the exodus they were 
probably not in a condition to accept any loftier 
view. 

Passing on to another form of objection, our op- 
ponent says, " If you base the immortality of man 
upon the teachings of the l^ew Testament, then it 
becomes identified with a doctrine of resurrection, 
which is equivalent to the reconstruction of our 
present bodies at some future period — the recom- 
pounding of their existing elementary atonis, after 



170 IMMORTALITY. 

tliey have been "blown hither and thither by the 
winds, and been resolved into their primitive gases, 
entering in this form into the composition of vari- 
ons kinds of vegetable life, perhaps into the sub- 
stance of a thousand different human bodies." 

This is not the Christian idea of the resurrection, 
and St. Paul calls the man a fool wdio holds such a 
doctrine as that. In reply to those who ask, " With 
what body do they come ?" he says expressly, 
" Thou sowest not that body tliat shall be" — that 
is, it is not the organic structure which is laid in 
the earth that appears again. But he always teach- 
es that the soul is to have some sort of investiture 
in the spiritual w^orld ; it is " not to be unclothed." 
"We know nothing as to the specific nature of 
wdiat he calls " the spiritual body," but then we 
know just as little of the actual substance of which 
the natural or animal body is composed. Matter 
is revealed to us by its outward properties, and 
sj)irit by its manifestations, so that we apprehend 
the existence of both by the same process. That 
the spiritual body is somewhere and somehow en- 
wrapped within the folds of the material form, as 
the oak is latent in the acorn, and will hereafter 
rise out of — which is what the word resurrection 
means — the natural body, is scriptural and rational. 

That there w^ill also be an analogy between the 



IMMORTALITY. 171 

natural and the spiritual body, as well as some sort 
of identity in the two forms of existence, I do not 
doubt. God '' gives to every seed his own body." 
Wliile the substance, or under-lying essence, of the 
one must be unlike that of the other, there may 
still be a resemblance in their appearance, and, to 
some extent, in their functions ; not an actualiden- 
tity, for, in its glorified state, all defects and impur- 
ities must be removed ; " that which is sown in 
weakness will be raised in power," the blinded eye 
opened to discern all the beauties of the celestial 
firmament, the deafened ear unstopped to hear the 
melody of angelic anthems, the enfeebled arm made 
strong, and the crippled feet swift and firm. 

It is a significant fact that whenever spiritual be- 
ings are spoken of in Scripture as revealing them- 
selves to the sight, they appear in bodily forms, and 
are spoken of indiscriminately as angels and men. 
The Saviour ascended into the heavens in a human 
form which the Articles of the Church teach us He 
still retains. 

? '' When you speak of form^^^ continues our sci- 
entific skeptic, " if your words have any real mean- 
ing, the term must be intended to signify some- 
thing which is capable of being bounded in space, 
and which, therefore, must have an outline or figure ; 
and if this is in any sense a hody, it must be com- 



172 IMMORTALITY. 

petent to exercise certain functions, such as changing 
its place, receiving and imparting knowledge, and 
doing whatever may be demanded bv the exigen- 
cies of its condition." 

We are perfectly willing to accept this statement, 
and if you say that all this requires the existence of 
some sort of physical organization, that there can 
be no action without limbs, and no sight without 
an eye, and no communication of thought without a 
tongue, and inasmuch as such organs are incompati- 
ble with the idea of spiritual being, therefore it is 
unscientific to believe in any such being — allow 
me to ask one or two questions. 

If, a Inmdred years ago, some wild visionary had 
said that the time would soon come when, in look- 
ing with a magnifier at what appears to the eye as a 
little dot of the pen, you would be able to read in 
that dark speck every word of the Lord's Prayer, 
distinctly engraved, or see there a perfect copy of 
your friend's face ; and then should be further told 
that this w^onderful delineation had been wa-ought 
without the use of any instrument whatever, even 
without the touch of a human hand — would not such 
men as you have been almost certain to pronounce 
such a prediction unscientific, and therefore ab- 
surd ? Suppose he had then gone on to say that, 
at the same period, merchants in IsTew-York would 



IMMORTALITY. 173 

hold communication witli tlieir correspondents in 
London almost as readiiy as if tliey were sitting in 
tlie same counting-room, I imagine tliat the skeptic 
would insist upon knowing something of the pro- 
cess by which such a result was to be obtained, be- 
fore he would consent to listen patiently to so pre- 
posterous a statement. 

Suppose then, for his enlightenment and satis- 
faction, he should be told that the men of dif- 
ferent continents conversed together by sending 
communications along the bed of the ocean, how 
far would this tend to reduce his skepticism ? Sup- 
j)Ose, then, he should be further informed that the 
principle involved in this mode of intercourse con- 
sisted in producing a simultaneous vibration on the 
coast of America and the coast of Europe, this vibra- 
tion shaping itself into words and sentences ; Avould 
this explanation satisfy him any better? And if, 
after all this, he should be told that the agent or 
power by means of which this would be done is 
something which the eye of man never saw — some- 
thing which could never be weighed in the most de- 
licate scales, something so nearly analogous to spirit 
that the same terms by which one is described are 
equally applicable to the other ; if he had never be- 
lieved in the existence of spirit before, I do not 



174 IMMORTALITY. 

think that such a story as tliis would be likely to 
convert liim. 

I have cited these illustrations to show that it is 
absurd and unscientific to deny the existence of 
spiritual beings, endowed with spiritual bodies, and 
capable of exercising all the functions which j)er- 
tain to the highest condition of being, merely on 
the ground that we do not know how they are con- 
stituted, and by what modes they act. When you 
can tell by w^hat process mind acts upon hodj, and 
body upon mind, in our present form of exist- 
ence — how it is that a thought can gave an impulse 
to the flow of the blood, and the stagnation of the 
blood arrest the action of thought, then you may 
deny, with some better show of reason, the fact of 
your own immortality, because you are not able to 
comprehend the mysteries of that immortality. 

"But," adds the objector, ^^this is not the only 
ground upon which I am led to question what I un- 
derstand to be the Christian doctrine of a future 
life. There are certain moral reasons which have 
more w^eight in inducing my skepticism than any 
which are derived from science. Death, as a phy- - 
sical process, is merely the return of the elements 
which have been drawn from the atmosphere and 
the earth, in order to form the frame-work of a 
body, to their original condition. Now, if this de- 



IMMORTALITY. 1T5 

stnictioii of the material building liberates tlie spir- 
itual being, the man, who occupied it, and transfers 
him to a new plane of existence, it may be presumed 
that his spiritual or moral identity is not substanti- 
ally affected by the change ; otherwise, it is not 
the same man who moves away from the old habi- 
tation that once lived there. And yet I am told 
that instantly upon their entering into the spiritual 
state all persons are at once transformed, either into 
spotless angels, incapable of an error or a fault, or 
into infernal demons, incapable of a virtue, or even 
of that exercise of wdll upon which virtue depends. 
Now, wherever we draw the line which may be 
considered as separating the bad from the good in 
this world, on the border territory we find many 
persons whose position it is difficult to determine, 
and there is hardly an appreciable difference be- 
tween the lowest man on one side and the highest 
.on the other ; and yet I am told that death at once 
remits all who stand on one side to a state of per- 
fect happiness and holiness, and all others to the re- 
gions' of irremediable woe. The difficulty in recon- 
ciling this doctrine with any intelligible idea of the 
justice of God," continues our skeptical objector, 
" is not relieved by removing the matter of salva- 
tion from, a moral ground, and making it depend 
upon the reception of a rite, or the exercise of a 



176 IMMORTALITY. 

particular faith, because this seems to make the line 
of division altogether arbitrary, and takes away the 
idea of recompense and retribution, as based upon 
personal character. Still further, according to the 
popular theology, this world is the only place of 
j^robation, and the eternal destiny of every human 
being is determined at the moment of his death ; 
but there are millions upon millions passing away 
every year, who have had no opportunities of moral 
discipline, and no enlightenment as it respects the 
true character of God, and their duties to Him. 
N"ow, dreadful as is the thought of annihilation, it 
is harder still to believe in an immortality wdiich 
carries with it such doctrines as these." 

We have tried to give the objector fair play, and 
to state his case precisely as we suppose he would 
put it ; for, in these days, it is not worth while to 
blink the real difficulties which trouble even good 
people's minds. 

There are three ways in wliicli such objections 
as those which have just been stated may be dis- 
posed of. The first is by resolving the whole mat- 
ter of probation and our final destiny into a sover- 
eign decree of the Almighty, and denying man the 
competency to form an intelligible judgment as to 
what constitutes justice in the dealings of God with 
man. The reasons for declining to accept this so- 



IMMORTALITY. 177 

lutiou of the difficulty are so manifest that I 
need only to allude to them. It makes religion only 
an arbitrary matter, leaves no room for the exer- 
cise of personal responsibility, and destroys all those 
fundamental conceptions of justice which He at the 
foundation of character and morality. I do not say 
that this has always been the practical result ; for 
many of the best men that ever lived held and still 
hold this theological opinion ; because there are 
other elements in their creed which qualify, if they 
do not destroy, the falsities wdiich it contains. 

The second mode of meeting the difficulty is by 
endeavoring to reconcile the elements which it em- 
bodies with our natural sense of justice. I con- 
fess that I am not competent to do this, and 
therefore I am obliged to seek for some other solu- 
tion. And the only way in which relief can be ob- 
tained is by denying that the Christian doctrine of 
immortality is embarrassed by any such dogmas as 
have been urged to its discredit. If there is any , 
one principle fundamental in religion, as*wxll as in 
morals, it is that our conception of justice, as ap- 
plied to God's dealings with man, must be the same 
as that which reo-ulates our dealino;s with each 
other ; otherwise, we really have no idea of justice 
whatever. If there is any one j^rinciple fundamen- 
tal in the Christian religion, it is that destiny must 



178 IMMORTALITY. 

be according to character. All the teachings of 
Christ, and of His disciples, are based upon this. 
Men are indeed called upon to believe, in order to 
be saved ; but the definition of saving faith is that 
" which works by love, purifying the heart." Its 
value is in its moral quality, not in any thing arbi- 
trary or artificial. And while the doctrine of fu- 
ture reward and punishment is thoroughly inter- 
w^oven with that of immortality, it is also certain 
that God will never inflict upon any creature that 
he has made, a worse doom than he deserves. This 
of course involves the principle that every individ- 
ual must take his place in the next stage of being, 
not in accordance with any arbitrary classification, 
but in exact conformity to his individual deserts. 
No moral agent, who has lived as we have all 
lived, can ever claim a reward on the ground of his 
personal merit ; for the balance of demerit turns 
against us all, and therefore we must all throw our- 
selves in faith upon the mercy of God in Jesus 
Christ ; and still it is true that destiny will be ap- 
portioned in strict accordance with personal charac- 
ter. There can be no world in which all will stand 
on«the same level; and, in the general apportion- 
ment of human destiny, and in" determining the 
question of our salvation, God is to draw the line 
between the righteous and the wicked, and not 



IMMORTALITY. 179 

man ; and probably He will do this upon principles 
very unlike those which would determine our judg- 
ments. 

The only difficulty which remains unconsidered 
in the present connection is that which relates to 
the final condition of those vast multitudes, both in 
Christian and in heathen lands, who have had no 
opportunities of real moral discipline here on 
earth, and therefore no actual probation. As this 
is not a practical question, the Scriptures throw 
but little light upon it, simply affirming that 
those who have not been enlightened by revelation 
will be judged by the law written on their hearts, 
or in accordance w^ith the light which nature fur- 
nishes. I will not insult the intelligence of this 
congregation by citing the familiar passage from the 
book of Ecclesiastes, '^ In the place where the tree 
falleth, there it shall be," in the present connec- 
tion. It has nothing to do with the subject, and if 
it had, standing where it does, it would carry no 
authority ; for other passages might be quoted from 
the same writer, which, separated from their con- 
nection, and used as mere proof-texts, would be 
made to teach the doctrine of man's annihilation. 
It is enough for us to know that ^' the Judge of all 
the earth will do right," and we may safely and 
confidently leave the adjustment of matters^ with 



180 IMMORTALITY. 

which we have no practical concern, to be disposed 
of by Ilim. 

There is one thing further which stands in the 
way of a belief in our immortality, or at any rate 
makes belief so shadowy and unsatisfactory that it 
takes no positive hold upon the popular mind, and 
excites but little real interest. And here, again, 
I would prefer that the objector should state his 
own case. 

" I find myself/' he says, '^ endowed with a great 
variety of tastes and capacities. If there is a God, 
and I am made in His image, all those gifts must 
have come from Him, and therefore they are the tran- 
script and reflection of corresponding qualities per- 
taining to His own being. I love music and art ; I 
find my liappiness in exploring the wonders of sci- 
ence ; I delight in genial society, and the brisk flow 
of elevated humor ; I like to study men in the his- 
tories of the past, as well as in the conduct of the 
day. At times, I find myself absorbed in the great 
mysteries of philosophy, in trying to open the secret 
chambers of thought ; and while I acknowledge that 
a sound moral nature and a profound sentiment of 
reverence are essential to a well-balanced character, 
I do not think that a man can fill up the full mea- 
sm^e of his being if he is nothing more than what is 
ordinarily understood to be a pious person. And 



IMMORTALITY. 181 

any condition of existence would therefore seem to 
me imperfect and nnsatisfactoiy, in which all the 
nobler elements of my nature did not find room for 
development and expansion. 

" But, in the view that is ordinarily presented of 
the future world, I find no recognition of any such 
opportunities, or of any varieties, either of character 
or employment. Heaven is a place, 

* Wliere congregations ne'er break up. 
And Sabbaths never end ; ' 

as if mere rest from labor and attendance upon 
religious services filled up the whole measure of 
one's desires and capacities." 

"Wliat shall we say, in reply to all this ? Many 
highly respectable Christians would respond to the 
effect that such vain talk only indicated the Avant 
of true spirituality and tlie dominion of a carnal 
mind ; and then go home to the enjoyment of their 
books and pictures and pleasant gardens, perhaps to 
resume the discussion of the inatter around a table 
loaded with luximes and sparkling with costly 
Avines. 

Is it not better to acknoAvledge that God is hon- 
ored and served by the consecrated use of all the 
powers and faculties with which He has endowed 
us, and that our immortal life must provide for the 



182 IMMORTALITY. 

culture and exercise of every lofty gift which per- 
tains to our nature ? I believe that, as the redeem- 
ed will be employed hereafter in ministries of love 
and mercy, so there w^ill be ministries of art and 
ministries of science ; researches into the great facts 
of the universe, w^hich have been prematurely ar- 
rested here by the hand of death, will be taken 
up again, and prosecuted to the end hereafter. In 
this primary stage of our being, we just read a 
chapter or two in the great book of knowledge ^ 
which God has given us, when it drops from our 
hand, and the mortal vision closes forever. We have 
only had time to get some faint, imperfect notion 
of the marvels of creation, the mysteries of the hu- 
man soul, the strange anomalies of life, the pro- 
found depths of the divine economy. Does the 
study end there ? 

"With an eternity before us, whicli must be occu- 
pied with something ; witli faculties immeasurably 
quickened and expanded by the new sj)here of ex- 
istence upon wliich we liave entered ; with a field 
of observation opened to our view, which knows no 
boundary or limit ; w^ith no servile Avork to do, no 
clothing to weave, no food to earn, no houses to build, 
no investments to watch — ^liave you any doubt that 
there will be such noble and varied employments 
for the mind and the heart as will test to the full 



IMMORTALITY. 183 

every capacity of our being, and reveal to us, one 
by one, such infinite wonders, that the song will 
spring spontaneously and perpetually from our lips, 
^^ Benedicitc, omnia opera Domini !" With angels 
and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, 
the redeemed will laud and magnify God's glorious 
name in one unceasing anthem ; but its chords and 
harmonies will be as varied and multitudinous as 
the stars. Every song that is sung there will be 
set to the same grand key-note: "Worthy is the 
Lamb !" will be the one absorbing theme ; but, as 
the rainbow, whicli arches the great white throne, 
flashes with every color and thit of earth and sky, 
so tliat voice of praise will be as the voice of many 
waters ; tlie voice of great thunders mingling with 
the soft harping of liarps ; all tongues and lan- 
guages joining in praise and honor and glory and 
blessing to Him that was slain. "Whatever else may 
occupy us, we shall never tire of that theme. 
Wherever our studies and researches may take us, 
we shall always rejoice to return and listen to His 
teachings, who hath redeemed us with His precious 
blood. There is one name that will forever be to 
us above every other name. And when eternity 
has grown old, we shall still feel that we have not 
begun to fathom the depths of the Saviour's love. 
Some of youinay be surprised and disappointed, 



184 IMMORTALITY. 

because we have attempted no elaborate and direct 
proof of the doctrine of man's immortality, but 
have merely addressed ourselves to the removal of 
I certain j)opular objections. To ask jour assent to 
this doctrine, on the ground of Scripture evidence, 
would be simply to change our base, and enter upon 
a more general subject ; for no one who receives 
the New Testament as a revelation from God, can 
have any doubts in regard to his immortality. I 
have rested the general argument upon the simple 
ground that man is able to conceive of his own im- 
mortality, and, if this conception is a delusion, all 
faith in God becomes extinct. For, if any thing 
that pertains to our nature comes from Him, this 
instinct or intuition or consciousness must have been 
implanted in our souls by His hand. To believe 
that He has deceived us is the most horrible thought 
that can enter the mind of man. Then I do not 
know or care whether any thing is true, and I Avould 
j)refer to believe that there is no God. 

But, let it be observed that this general conscious- 
ness of immortality is never disturbed, until some 
subtle man begins to urge objections, and it is for 
this reason that I have conlined myself to the con- 
sideration of those cavils, and tried to embody them 
all in one brief sketch, and dispose of them. H I 
have failed to do tliis satisfactorily, you must not 



IMMORTALITY. 185 

conclude tliat tliey can not be removed, bnt attri- 
bute the failure to my inability to cope witli the 
subject. I am sure that I have not sought to evade 
the cavils of the unbeliever, or to meet them with 
ambiguous and uncertain replies. I have much 
more sympathy Avith those earnest but doubting 
souls, who are crying out of the darkness, and 
looking in vain for some gleam of light to illumine 
the pathway of the eternal future, but still looking 
with anxious hope, and trying to live as they think 
God would have them live, whether they are to die 
as the beast dieth or not, than I have with that 
great multitude who passively accept the fact that 
they are to live somewhere forever, and then go 
about their work and their play, as if nothing con- 
cerned them beyond the gains and the amusements 
of the day. Better to doubt honestly than to believe 
stupidl3^ 

It is one thing to accept the fact of immortality 
as a part of one's creed, and another thing to re- 
ceive it into the soul as a living power, so that we 
actually enter into our eternal life this side of the 
grave. " Heaven begun is the living proof that 
makes the heaven to come credible. Christ in you 
is the hope of glory. He alone can believe in im- 
mortality wdio feels the resurrection in him." The 
remedy for doubt is experience. Wlien one can 



186 IMMOKTALITY. 

say, with the apostle, '^ I hiow whom 1 have be- 
lieved, and am persuaded that He is able to keep 
that which I have committed mito hiin against that 
day," death is abolished, and life and innnortality 
are brought to light. They are now see/i, and not 
merely believed in. They have the power of a pre- 
sent fact, and so they regulate our thoughts and 
conduct, just as they are affected by the things 
which stand right before us, and address themselves 
to our senses. A holy life is the surest protection 
against doubt and unbelief. 



EVOLUTION 



PERSONAL CREATOR. 



JOHN COTTOX SMITH, D.D., 

Rector of the Church of the Ascension, New- York. 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 



The subject assigned to me in this. Course of 
Lectures, is " Evolution and a Personal Creator." 
It presents perhaps the most important aspect of 
the great controversy which is carried on, in this 
age, between Science and Religion. The conflict 
which, in former years, was waged upon the battle- 
fields of Astronomy and Geology, now waxes most 
fierce upon the long lines of vegetable and animal 
development. On the one side are those who claim 
to be the discoverers of certain facts and laws, in 
nature, as to the history of life on om* globe, and 
the circimastances under which its various species 
have appeared. On the other are the advocates of a 
fundamental religious truth which they claim is 
seriously compromised by these alleged facts and 
laws. 

It will be my purpose, in this Lecture, to take 
into consideration the present aspect of the contro- 
versy, so as to ascertain, if possible, what is likely 
to be its result in regard to the interests of Reli- 
gion, both natural and revealed. 



190 EYOLUTIOX AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

I cannot claim to come to the consideration of 
this subject without bias, or in fact without posi- 
tive convictions. It is a profound saying of Goethe, 
" I can promise to be upright, but not to be without 
bias." It would be impossible for me to put my- 
self in the attitude of indifference in regard to 
any question involving the existence of a Personal 
God. But I think I can claim to be earnestly de- 
sirous to consider dispassionately and candidly what- 
ever theory may be urged as to natural phenomena, 
and the laws by which they are governed. I can 
certainly claim to have large sympathy with scien- 
tific investigation, and with the spirit, on the whole, 
in which it is prosecuted. In regard to the aspect 
of the general subject now before us, I would say, 
at the outset, that it is no part of my purpose to 
attempt to refute the theory of Evolution. I wish 
to hold, for the present, the position which Mr. 
Gladstone has recently assumed in regard to it, 
that of a suspense of judgment. I would say, 
however, that the direction of scientific disco- 
very, for the last few years, seems to me to ren- 
der it not improbable that, before this generation 
has passed away, some theory of Evolution will be 
generally accepted as the most rational explanation 
of the phenomena of nature. With this conviction 
I shall make it my special object to show that, even 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 191 

if some theory of Evolution should come to be es- 
tablished as a scientific truth, it would not militate 
against any interest peculiar to Christianity, or in 
any way compromise the fundamental principle of 
religion — the personality of God. 

It will be necessary, as our first step, to define 
the terms in which our subject is stated. This can 
be done only generally, and with approximate cor- 
rectness ; for fuller definitions would shut us up to 
some one of the various forms in which, on the one 
hand, the theory of Evolution, or, on the other, the 
truth of the personality of God, is held. 

To begin with Evolution. Some idea of the 
difficulty of an accurate definition of Evolution may 
be derived from the fact that Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
a writer not usually wanting in clearness of state- 
ment, defines it as follows : " Evolution is an inte- 
gration of matter and concomitant dissipation of 
motion J during which the matter passes fvo7n an 
indefinite^ incoherent homogeneity, to a definite^ co- 
herent heterogeneity / and during lohich the retained 
motion %indergoes a parallel transformation P Sci- 
entific as such a definition is, it is evidently imfit 
for popular use. We must seek for some other, 
which, while it will have less of scientific accuracy 
and completeness, will better answer the purpose 
we have in view. When we speak in this discus- 



192 EVOLUTION AND A PEKSONAL CKEATOK. 

sion of Evolution, Ave mean the theory according to 
which all life on our globe is derived in a continu- 
ous and unbroken series, by natural generation, from 
original organisms. In extending the theory to its 
most general form, it embraces all phenomena, inor- 
ganic as well as organic, and affirms that all phe- 
nomena are linked with and proceed from preced- 
ing phenomena, by a process of development, in ac- 
cordance with universal laws, from the most simple 
to the most complex forms. 

The doctrine of a Personal Creator affirms the 
existence of a Being from whom all the phenomena 
of the Universe proceed, and by Avhom the laws, by 
which they are governed, were established. This 
Being, the doctrine also affirms, is self-conscious, 
and has those attributes without which personality 
is unknown to us, reason, affections, and will. 

The idea of the absolute continuity of this pro- 
cess of Evolution necessarily excludes the idea of 
the exercise, since the beginning of the process, 
of what has usually been understood as creative 
power. Here is one point where the theory is 
thought to militate against the idea of a Personal 
Creator. It s'eems, according to this ' objection, 
to diminish the need of a Creator. Then it is 
generally held by the advocates of this theory, 
that back of this development, or previous to 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 193 

this beginning, if it had a beginning, lies the 
unknowable, and the conclusion drawn is that 
if there is a Personal Creator it is to us as if 
He were not, for we cannot know Him. Besides 
this, whatever discredits that which has been ac- 
cepted as a Revelation of a Personal Creator tends 
to diminish our sense of His Being, and since the 
theory of Evolution seems to conflict with the 
account given in the Scriptures of the Origin of 
Man, it has been thought that, in this way also, it 
not only compromises interests peculiar to Christi- 
anity, but tends to undermine our faith in the exis- 
tence of a Personal Creator. 

In entering upon the argument required by this 
supposed antagonism between the theory of Evolu- 
tion and the truth of the existence of a Per- 
sonal Creator, it seems to me desirable to find some 
ground which can be held in common by the Evo- 
lutionist, even if he is not a Theistj and the Theist 
even if he is not an Evolutionist. 

Or in other words, I should be glad to conduct 
this inquiry upon the basis of an agreement between 
Theists, who are open to whatever considerations 
may be urged in favor of the theory of Evolution, 
and Evolutionists who, while their primary object 
is the investigation of nature upon scientific princi- 
ples, are ready to consider candidly the arguments 



194 EYOLUTIOK AISTD A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

which may be urged in behalf of the presence and 
agency of a Personal God in Nature. 

In order to accomplish this, let it be remembered 
that the Evolutionist holds that there has been a 
period in the history of being, when whatever ex- 
isted phenomenally was homogeneous, that is, all 
alike. What that was which then existed as matter, 
that is, as capable of affecting ns as what we call mat- 
ter now does, the Evolutionist will not undertake to 
determine. It may have been of inconceivable ten- 
uity, or it may have been, though having all the attri- 
butes of what we call matter, only co-existent, im- 
measurably diffused force-centres. Some such con- 
dition the Evolutionist must believe to have at one 
time existed. 

There is no difficulty whatever for the Theist in 
this view. Indeed, he most readily represents to 
himself, in this v/ay, the phenomenal result of the 
original creative act. We have then here a com- 
mon ground upon which both can stand. It is the 
critical point too in the whole controversy. The 
waves of this boundless ether, pulsating with its all- 
pervading forces, are perfectly representable in 
thought. Let us see if we, Theist s or Evolution- 
ists, can venture back together into the mysterious 
depths which preceded the phenomenal condition, 
in the presence of which we are now supposed to 



EVOLUTION" AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 195 

stand ; and then, tui^ning our faces to the future, fol- 
low on together, in thought, througli the vast cycles 
of time, the stupendous developments of the Uni- 
verse. 

If the Evolutionist should say here that it is true 
that such a condition of things must have existed, 
bnt that it is impossible to conceive of any preced- 
ing period when the phenomenal did not exist, 
this is true indeed, but it will not prevent our 
standing on common ground, nor impede the pro- 
gress of our argument. It is impossible indeed to 
conceive of a beginning of phenomena, but it is also 
impossible to conceive of phenomena not having 
a beginning ; and if the Evolutionist urges the one, 
the Theist can balance it by urging the other. So 
far then there is nothing gained or lost upon either 
side. Let the Theist waive the point of what pre- 
cedes phenomena, and put the inquiry in this form : 
what is that which underlies phenomena and the 
forces which in phenomena are disclosed? The 
Evolutionist cannot stand npon the ground of utter 
nescience. He is compelled to admit, and he does 
admit. Absolute Being. He may say that we can- 
not know Absolute Being, but he is obliged to say 
that we know that Absolute Being exists. Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer himself says, " By the very conditions 
of thought we are prevented from knowing any 



196 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

thing hut relative leing ; yet hy these very condi- 
tions of thought^ an indefinite consciousness of Abso- 
lute Being is necessitated^ " The axiomatic truths 
of physical science unavoidably postulate Absolute 
Being as their common basis^ "Both Religion\ 
and Science are obliged by the demonstrated unte- 
nability of their supposed cognitions^ to confess 
that the ulthnate reality is incognizable^ and yet 
both are obliged to assert the existence of an Ulti- 
mate Reality, Without this^ Religion has no sub- 
ject matter * and without thisj Science^ subjective 
and objective^ lacTcs its indispensable datum. We 
cannot construct a theory of internal phenomena 
without postulating Absolute Being / and unless 
we postulate Absolute Being ^ or being which per- 
sists^ we cannot construct a theory of external phe- 
nomena?'^ (First Principles, p. 190.) 

It is impossible to overestimate the importance, 
in our argument, of this admission of Mr. Spencer. 
The Theist and Evolutionist alike have thus tran- 
scended phenomena and all the laws of their succes- 
sion, and recognized an Ultimate Reality and Ab- 
solute Being. It matters not now what we know of 
this Being. We shall have occasion hereafter to 
consider that. Our point now is that Theists and 
Evolutionists have together drawn aside the pheno- 
menal veil which hides the arcana of nature, and 



EVOLUTIOK AND A PERS0:N"AL CREATOR. 197 

recognized the Absolute Being within the sanctuary 
of the Universe. 

But as we stand, Theists and Evolutionists, in 
imagination, in the presence of this boundless ocean 
of force-centres or ultimate atoms of matter, and 
recognize beyond and beneath it an Ultimate Reali- 
ty and Absolute Being, the inquiry inevitably sug- 
gests itself. What is the relation of the Phenomenal 
Universe to the Absolute Being ? It may be said, 
that it is impossible for us to have any knowledge 
in regard to any such relation, and that the whole 
subject is necessarily shrouded in impenetrable ob- 
scurity. But it may be replied that if the whole 
matter is thus beyond the sphere of human know- 
ledge, then it is of course as unwarrantable to deny 
the relation as to affirm it. The Evolutionist would 
not hesitate to admit this. It would follow, then, 
upon this admission, that it is at least as reasonable 
to affirm this relation as to deny it. The Evolu- 
tionist might very probably agree that it is more 
reasonable to suppose that there is some relation 
between Absolute Being and the Phenomenal Uni- 
verse. It is allowable for us at least to make the 
supposition, that there is some relation, and still 
further to make some supposition as to what the 
relation is. These allowable suppositions we can 
use as working hypotheses. Without stopping now 



198 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

to examine the qnestiou as to whether we are en- 
tirely ignorant of Absolute Being and of its relation 
to the Phenomenal Universe, we will go only so far 
as the Evolutionist will permit us to go, without 
denying the validity of our position. He will not 
object to our hypotheses, since in regard to a mat- 
ter of which, as he holds, we are entirely ignorant, 
any hypothesis is just as likely to be true as false. 
Postponing then any effort to show the validity of 
our hypotheses, I would suppose that a relation ex- 
ists between Absolute Being and the Phenomenal 
Universe, that Absolute Being is Personal Being 
with Reason, Affections, and Will, that the Ab- 
solute Being is immanent in the Phenomenal 
Universe, and that the forces and laws of the Phe- 
nomenal Universe are merely expressions of the 
agency and will of the Absolute Being. 

It is important to notice here that if the Evolu- 
tionist, while he cannot deny but that these hypothe- 
ses may be true, does not admit the validity of the 
evidence in behalf of their truth, it is not in conse- 
quence of holding the theory of Evolution. The 
theory of Evolution does not touch these hypotheses 
at any conceivable point. A man may hold that 
theory to its fullest extent, and in its most extreme 
form, and yet, in entire consistency, affirm every one 
of these hypotheses to be true. The only question 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 199 

thus far in regard to wliicli there is a difference of 
opinion, is a metaphysical one as to the possibility 
of our Ivnowledge of the Absolute. Whether the 
theory of Evohition is true or false, this question 
remains unaft'ected. 

Taking up, then, these hypotheses, reserving the 
evidence of their truth for a while, and contemplat- 
ing, in imagination, this primitive condition of the 
Universe, we find ourselves in the presence of the 
original liyle (as the Greeks called it), or matter, in 
which are certain all-pervading forces and laws, 
which, upon our present supposition, are expressions 
of the agency and will of the Absolute Being. 

It devolves upon us at this point to inquire what 
is the character of these forces, and what are the 
laws by which their operation in the Universe is 
governed? It is impossible of course to do more, 
at this time, than to state some of the principal 
forces and laws, and those upon which the Evolu- 
tionist relies as the methods by which the develop- 
ments of the Universe are evolved. With the ad- 
vantage of the magnificent discoveries of Science, 
we know something of these forces and laws, and 
we can see what would be the method and the re- 
sults of their operation in the homogeneous mass we 
have supposed to be before us. There are certain pri- 
mary truths through which these forces and laws are 



200 EVOLUTIOK AND A PERSONAL CKEATOR. 

disclosed to us. Such are the Persistence of Force, 
the Continuity of Motion, and the Indestructibility 
of Matter. The last two are necessarily derived 
from the first ; for " our exjperiences of inaUer and 
Quotion are resolvable into experiences of forced I 
am following Mr. Herbert Spencer in this enumera- 
tion of 2)rimary truths, as I shall follow him also in 
his application of them to the process of Evolution, 
because I wish to show that the theory of Evo- 
lution, as stated by its most renowned advocates, is 
not inconsistent with the belief in a Personal Crea- 
tor. 

And here let it be noticed that whatever else 
may be the result of a process of evolution, these 
laws are not. They precede and underlie all phe- 
nomena. They are eternal principles^ They inevi- 
tably suggest an eternal mind, of which they are 
eternal ideas. And we seek in vain for a subject in 
which these eternal principles can inhere, if not in 
the Ultimate Eeality, the Absolute Being, the exis- 
tence of which, according to Mr. Spencer, we are 
compelled to acknowledge. 

I have referred to force, in the general, as includ- 
ing all forces, and under the general law of its per- 
sistence, other numerous laws will group them- 
selves. The most prominent result at first of the 
operation of these forces, in accordance with these 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 201 

laws, upon the homogeneous mass by which space is 
supposed to be filled, is to transform its homogene- 
ous into a heterogeneous character. Lines of force 
striking a homogeneous mass, at different angles, 
and the motion of its particles necessarily following 
the direction of least resistance, will constitute 
a process of differentiation. We see the amazing 
and endless variety of the Universe begin. The 
play of these forces integrates enormous masses of 
matter. The process of integration is accompanied 
by that of segregation and equilibration. Groups, in 
a wonderful order, with vast intervals, move with 
inconceivable velocity through the abysses of space. 
Measureless periods of time roll away, and we be- 
hold the Stellar Universe, that Universe beneath 
the contemplation of which man trembles with the 
sense of his own nothingness, as he is overwhelmed 
with the splendor and majesty of this stupendous 
theatre for the development of life. As we stand 
at this point in the marvellous process, what shall 
we think of Absolute Being, the existence of which 
we are compelled to acknowledge ? Are we any less 
sure of the agency of this Being, any less certain 
that there^ are Reason and "Will behind all pheno- 
mena, than w^e should be if we had seen shaping 
hands come forth from the darkness, and build up 
the stately constellations ? l^ay, are we not more 



202 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

profoundly impressed by the invisible and silent, 
and immensely protracted and infinitely patient 
agency by wliich phenomena seem to come into 
being ! And as the Evolutionist recognizes the 
Absolute Being and its relationship to the pheno- 
menal universe, and is filled with wonder and awe 
at the mystery of this rational development an- 
swering to, but infinitely surpassing, a reason of 
which he is conscious in himself, does not an al- 
most irresistible impulse move him to a recognition 
of a Personal Being, and could any more reason- 
able utterance rise to his lips than this: "Thou, 
Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of 
the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thine 
hands" ! 

Thus far we have witnessed but the mere prelude 
of that development which the Evolutionist claims 
has proceeded uninterruptedly in nature to the pre- 
sent time. We have seen that, up to this point, 
there is nothing in the theory, or the facts which 
support it, which conflicts with the idea of a Per 
sonal Being, from whom all this development pro- 
ceeds, and by whom it is carried on. The only 
suggestion of difficulty, which is our alleged igno- 
rance of the Absolute, is, as has already been said, a 
metaphysical difficulty, and is in no way the result 
of the theory of Evolution. 



EVOLUTIOJS" AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 203 

Would it conflict at all witli the idea of a Per- 
sonal Creator, if it slionld be supposed that the pro- 
cess, having reached this point, is still continuous, 
and moves up into a higher sphere, presenting an 
entirely new class of phenomena ? If a Personal 
God chooses that tlie works of His hands shall be 
evolved step by step, each link joined to the j)reced- 
ing in an endless chain, instead of breaking up the 
continuity from time to time and beginning anew, 
does He thereby obscure to us the fact of His exist- 
ence ? Does not the continuous process, which is, 
in effect, one uninterrupted series of acts of crea- 
tion, testify more clearly than a mere mechanical 
process, interrupted from time to time by special 
acts of creation, could possibly do to an infinite 
Keason, which sees the end from the beginning ? 

Su23posing this to be so, and that there would be 
rather gain than loss for the Theistic argument, 
should it appear that the process of evolution is 
still continuous from inorganic to organic nature, 
we are prepared to consider the evidence to bo of- 
fered that this is the case. 

Suppose we still stand in imagination at the 
point we have already reached in the process of 
evolution. We presently behold a new phenomenon 
— that of life. It does not burst upon us suddenly 
in highly advanced organisms ; we find it in the 



204 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

simplest possible forms. In bringing the process 
before our minds, we can of com-se avail ourselves 
only of the facts which are made known to ns of 
that early period in the stratified history of our 
globe. These facts are few ; the record is exceed- 
ingly imperfect ; but in connection with other facts 
now accessible to us, they seem to indicate that the 
first appearance of life, supposing we had been wit- 
nesses of it, would not have seemed to us any inter- 
ruption of a continuous order of development. 
One who sees crystalline formation, with its deli- 
cate shoots branching out on either side from a cen- 
tral axis, would not be conscious of any disturbance 
of an established order in the appearance of plants, 
in the midst of what had hitherto been inorganic 
nature. In animal life, also, we reach a point where 
the transition from the inorganic would be almost 
imperceptible. In the jprotogenes of Haeckel we 
have, according to Mr. Spencer^ ^^ a type distinguish- 
able from a fragment of albumen only by its finely 
granular character." There are certain remarkable 
facts also in this connection, recognized by scientific 
men, and appealed to by the Evolutionist in support 
of his theory. For instance, the matter constituting 
the living world is identical with that which forms 
the inorganic world. And what is still more remark- 
able is, that all the forces exerted in the living 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 205 

world are probably either identical with the forces 
of the inorganic world, or are convertible into them. 
Besides, organic nature is all the time bnilt np out 
of inorganic nature, and returns into inorganic na- 
ture again. It may be said, indeed, by those who 
oppose this theory, that organic nature is inorganic 
nature j)lus life, and that the addition of life to na- 
ture is a new creation. But since we are supposing 
a divine act in every change of phenomena, how 
does it detract from the creative agency of God, if 
we aflfirm that through a certain arrangement of 
molecules life is developed, and plants or animals 
take their place in the boundless fields of nature ? 
This process of evolution, through inconceivably 
complex conditions and incalculable periods of time, 
has resulted, at last, according to the Evolutionist, 
in the flora and fauna of the vegetable and animal 
kingdoms of the present time. 

We have thus passed in our survey of the history 
of phenomena from inorganic to organic being. 
Certainly no point has been reached where Theist 
and Evolutionist, whom we have thus placed in a 
temporary antithesis, need to separate. If life has 
at last appeared upon the stage of being by a pro- 
cess of fine gradations, instead of by a sudden irrup- 
tion of a new order of things, is there any reason 
why the Theist should be disturbed ? Is there any 



206 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

reason why lie should hesitate, in the supposed in- 
terest of theology, to accept this as the truth in re- 
gard to the first appearance of life upon our globe ? 
He can recognize the All-powerful One behind 
this process just as well as he could, if he had seen 
a full-sized tree or animal start suddenly and with- 
out any phenomenal antecedents into being. And 
the Evolutionist, still haunted by the presence of 
the inscrutable Power which lies back of all phe- 
nomena, and which he recognizes, waits to hear 
whether a knowledge of this power is accessible to 
other than the mere scientific faculties of the mind, 
and is as far as possible from the aflSirmation of the 
fool who '• has said in his heart, there is no God." 

It is a part of my object, as I have already inti- 
mated, to present as fairly and strongly as I may be 
able to do, in the limits permitted me, the grounds 
upon which the doctrine of evolution rests and 
claims the acceptance of thinking men. It becomes 
desirable, therefore, at this point, to consider some 
of the laws and facts which exist in the animal 
world, upon which the process of evolution is al- 
leged to rest. 

It is then, in the first place, a well-known law in 
nature, that animal life constantly encroaches upon 
the means of subsistence, or, as stated scientifically, 
that animal life increases in a geometrical progi^es- 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 207 

sion, while the means of subsistence increase only 
in an arithmetical progression. The inevitable con- 
sequence is, that a struggle for existence ensues, in 
which the more hardy and vigorous prevail, or in 
the language generally used in this connection, 
there is a " survival of the fittest." Then comes in 
the law of Heredity, or the likeness of offspring to 
their parents, by which there is a tendency to the 
extension and perpetuation of the stronger and 
better qualities. Then there is the tendency to vari- 
ation, under the influence of special surroundings 
and acquired habits. These variations are almost 
always in the line of advantage to the animal, and 
becoming stamped, as it were, upon the organism, 
are themselves transmissible by inheritance. There 
is, therefore, a constant uplifting of life, a move- 
ment from the simple to the complex, from the 
unit to the manifold. 

There are, however, certain objections in regard 
to this theory, which we are bound at this point to 
consider, candidly weighing the replies which the 
evolutionist has made. 

The theory of evolution supposes that life has 
been undergoing ceaseless variation from the very 
first period of its existence, yet some of its ear- 
liest forms survive to the present day, and it is 
doubtful whether there have been any specific 



208 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

changes within the periods of history. This is a dif- 
ficulty which besets the theory in respect both to 
animal and vegetable life, and it may be well to con- 

isider it here for a moment in regard to both. The 
' evolutionist meets it by the assertion of what he calls 
'^ persistence of type" in nature. ^Vith a tendency 
in organisms to indefinite variation, under the influ- 
ence of external causes, there is also a tendency to 
adhere to the original type, and this tendency, 
under favorable circumstances, is able to persist 
through immense periods of time. It may be, also, 
the evolutionist can plausibly urge, that the whole 
period embraced in history is too short for percep- 
tible changes in species of vegetable or animal life. 
Still further, it may be urged, there may be laws 
which restrain evolution in certain directions while 
permitting it in others. And last of all, the evo- 
lutionist may say to us that the more highly organ- 
ized life is, the more stable it becomes, and that it 
now requires immensely more protracted periods to 
accomplish what we should call specific changes 

" tlian was the case when organisms were generally 
less complex. 

Another objection which has been urged against 
the theory of evolution is, that there is an absence 
in the geologic record of life of those fine grada- 
tions between what we call species, which might 



EVOLUTIOlSr AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 209 

be expected to exist if all life had proceeded by 
development from one or a few primordial germs. 
But the evolutionist might reply that the theory 
of evolution does not necessarily suppose this de- 
velopment to have proceeded from one or a few 
original germs. The development may have pro- 
ceeded from a vast number of original germs, and 
upon a vast number of parallel lines. This would 
account for the absence of fine gradations between 
different species of animal life. But besides this, 
the record of life on our globe is very imperfect. 
The smallest proportion possible of the life which 
has existed has left any trace behind. There are 
gaps and chasms everywhere in the record. The 
entire contents of strata of immense depth have 
been utterly destroyed. JSTow, if we suppose that 
no such destruction of organic remains had taken 
place, who can say but that these gaps and chasms 
would be found to be filled up, and that we should 
behold a record of all the various forms of animal 
life, blending by imperceptible gradations into 
each other ? But while such a development of life 
ha^ been everywhere and at all times interrupted 
and arrested, there are preserved, here and there, 
traces of the links by which various species were 
united. The f ossiliferous strata present not a few 
of what are called intercalary forms filling up the 



210 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

gaps between different species, and suggesting to 
the thouglitf ul mind the missing characters which 
have disappeared from the record. 

It has also been urged against the theory, that no 
instance has ever been known of one species pass- 
ing into another, and that therefore the doctrine of 
the transmutation of species, w^hich is involved in 
this theory, is destitute of foundation. The an- 
swer which is made to this objection is that the 
evolution is not supposed to be lateral, that is, from 
what we call one species to another already exist- 
ing species, but that it is uniformly in the line of 
the gradual improvement of species. Thus, even 
within the historical period, in which the time for 
such developments has been so brief, we find such 
an advance as to constitute, on any accepted prin- 
ciple of classification, a new species. The order 
coluvibee is, as is well known, a notable instance of 
this. There is nothing better understood by natu- 
ralists than the ease with which variations are es- 
tablished and transmitted in the pigeon tribe. 
With such an indication of a tendency in nature to 
permanent and rapidly increasing variation, it is 
difficult to resist the conclusion that sufficiently 
protracted periods of time, with the inevitable 
struggle for existence, and the fact of the trans- 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 211 

mission of acquired peculiarities, may be sufficient 
to account for all the varied development of life. 

There is a remarkable passage in Coleridge's 
Aids to jRefiection^ in which that profound j)hi- 
losopher anticipates, by a sort of insight into nature, 
the discoveries of the last few years, as to the as- 
cending evolution of life. He says, " Every rank 
of creatures, as it ascends in the scale of creation, 
leaves death behind it or imder it. The metal, at 
its height of being, seems a mute proj)hecy of the 
coming vegetation, into a mimic semblance of which 
it crystallizes. The blossom and flower, the acme 
of vegetable life, divides into correspondent organs 
w^ith reciprocal functions, and by instinctive mo- 
tions and approximations seems impatient of that 
fixure by which it is differenced in kind from the 
flower-shaped Psyche that flutters with free wdng 
above it. And wonderfully, in the insect realm, 
doth the irritability, the proper seat of instinct, 
while yet the nascent sensibility is subordinated 
thereto — most wonderfully, I say, doth the muscu- 
lar life in the insect, and the musco-arterial in the 
bird, imitate and typically rehearse the adaptive 
understanding, yea, and the moral affections and 
charities of man. Let us carry ourselves back, in 
spirit, to the mysterious week, the teeming work- 
days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before 



212 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

the eye of tlie inspired liistorian, of the generations 
of the heavens and of the earthy in the day that the 
Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And 
who that hath watched their ways with an under- 
standing heart could, as the vision evolving still 
advanced toward him, contemj)late the filial and 
loyal Bee ; the home-building, wedded and divorce- 
less Swallow ; and above all, the manifoldly intelli- 
gent Ant tribes, with their commonwealths and 
confederacies, their- warriors and miners, the hus- 
band folk, that fold in their tiny flocks on the 
honeyed leaf, and the virgin sisters, with the holy 
instincts of maternal love, detached, and in selfless 
purity — and not say to himself. Behold the shadow 
of approaching humanity ; the sun rising from be- 
hind, in the kindling morn of creation. Thus all 
lower natures find their highest good in semblances 
and seekings of that which is higher and better. 
All things strive to ascend, and ascend in their 
striving." 

When we thus contemplate nature, the very fact 
of its wonderful order, and its imiversal subordina- 
tion to law, only makes it seem to us all the more 
instinct with a divine life. The evolutionist, in the 
presence of this rational development, can utter no 
reasonable protest, if we exclaim — 



EVOLUTIOX AXD A PERSONAL CREATOR. 213 

*' God of the Granite and tlie Rose ! 

Soul of the Sparrow and the Bee ! 
The mighty tide of Being flows 

Through countless channels, Lord, from Thee. 
It leaps to life in grass and flowers. 

Through every grade of being runs ; 
While from Creation's radiant towers. 

Its glory flames in Stars and Suns." 

Tlio difficulty culminates, liowever, as we reach 
that point in the process where man appears. I 
wish to speak here with the utmost care, lest I 
should be misunderstood. The theory which in- 
volves man in this process of evolution, whether as 
regards his body alone, or both the body and the 
soul, is inconsistent with the interpretation of the 
scriptural account of the origin of man, which I, in 
common with other believers in Christianity, have 
received. I confess to very great reluctance to hav- 
ing that interpretation revised. I am by no means 
prepared to admit that a j)rocess of evolution, in- 
cluding man, is as yet so thoroughly established as 
to render it certain that this interpretation must be 
modified. But I remember that previous interpre- 
tations of the same class of subjects have been mo- 
dified, and even abandoned, and yet the great his- 
torical faith of the Church has survived unimpaired. 
I recognize the fact, so plainly disclosed in history, 



214: EYOLUTIO:^^ AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

that true interpretation of tlie Scriptures has been 
largely de23endent upon scientific progress. I be- 
lieve the investigation of nature to be one of the 
means by which the Holy Spirit leads us into all 
truth. I do not dare, therefore, to affirm that my 
interpretation of the Scriptures on this point is a 
finality, connected as it is only indirectly by a logi- 
cal process with any article of the faith. I can not 
venture to subject the faith itself to the stress and 
strain which should be borne by my fallible inter- 
pretation alone. I must be open, therefore, to any 
truth which God may teach in nature, in response 
to human inquiry ; and faith should be strong 
enough for a full assurance that all such truth will 
lead to more glorious* views of God, and of that 
salvation which He has provided for mankind. 

It is not necessarily involved in my subject to 
consider the possible reconciliation of the scriptu-, 
ral account of the origin of man with the theory of 
evolution. But the possibility of such a reconcilia- 
tion, should the theory be established, is so impor- 
tant, and so closely connected with the purpose 
which I have in view, that I will not evade the dif- 
ficulty, nor shun the delicate task of its considera- 
tion. 

It w^ill be well for us then to remember, lest our 
apprehensions should be unduly excited, that the 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 215 

interpretation in question lias never liad the sanc- 
tion of tlie Church, nor of the entire body of Chris- 
tian teachers. St. George Mivart has shown con- 
clusiv^ely that a theory of evolution was held by 
some of the most distinguished of the Christian 
philosophers of the- period of the schoolmen. In 
fact, it is not at all certain but that the interpreta- 
tion in question is itself the result of the imperfect 
science of earlier periods, and that the mischief, in 
this respect, w^hich science has done, science is now 
to repair. 

Let us understand clearly the diflSculty we are to 
meet here. It is not the question of the existence " 
of a Personal God. That question is not involv- 
ed, in any special sense, in the origin of man. It is 
not the question of the freedom of the will and 
moral accountability. There is nothing in the the- 
ory of a process of evolution inconsistent with the 
arrival of being, at some point, to all that which is 
involved in the moral attributes of man. The ques- 
tion is not mainly whether the scriptural account 
of this matter is to be understood literally, or is an 
account cast in a poetic form. The account itself, 
in the indiscriminate use in it of Hebrew^ words 
signifying to create and to make, as well as in other 
respects, affords indications that it was not intend- 
ed to be cast in a mould of rigid scientific accuracy. 



216 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

ISTeitlier Christianity nor the claims of God's word 
would be, compromised, even if the Mosaic account 
should be proved to be an Oriental allegory, teach- 
ing important truth under poetical forms. The 
real difficulty here encountered is in regard to the 
fall of man, which is a fundamental fact in histori- 
cal Christianity. At first view, it seems entirely 
inconsistent with the theory of evolution. That 
presents to us, apparently, an uninterrupted pro- 
gress towards a higher and better condition. What 
place is there, then, in the process, for such a fact 
as the Fall? 

In answering this question, we are led to the con- 
sideration of a peculiarity, in this process, which has 
attracted the attention of scientific men. This pe- 
culiarity has been described as an occasional blun- 
dering or blind groping of nature. There seem to 
be tentative movements in nature. There are fail- 
ures and positive degenerations. There is a ten- 
dency to variation, not only in the direction of ad- 
vantage and progress, but of arrested development 
and deterioration. This fact, about which there is 
no dispute, has been thought by some to furnish an 
argument against design in nature. There is a suf- 
ficient reply to that suggestion, but its considera- 
tion doesnot come now within our province. The 
use which I wish now to make of it is as an indica- 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 21T 

tion in tlie lower pliysical order of what takes place 
in tlie higher moral realm of nature. 

There is then a tendency to degeneration, as well 
as to progress, in nature. If the theory of Evolu- 
tion is true, the same law will manifest itself in the 
moral order. And what is the Fall of Man but 
that fact in the moral order, of which we have a 
prophecy in the deteriorations of the physical 
world ! 

It will be wise in us to watch carefully the pro- 
gress of investigation in this respect. The results 
already reached are certainly not of a character to 
be set lightly aside. The indications, in embryolo- 
gy, of the links between man and the lower orders of 
animal life ; the foreshadowing of human sentiment 
and emotion in the passions of the brute creation ; 
the startling suggestion which obtrudes itself, as we 
study nature, that certain habits in man may be the 
transmitted results of habits acquired all along that 
line of organic develoj)ment, through which huma- 
nity has been built up from the dust of the earth ; 
the wonderful fact that the book of Genesis itself 
groups man with the lower orders of animal life in 
the last period of creation ; all these considerations 
should be thoughtfully and candidly w^eighed. I am 
perfectly aware of tlie strength of the arguments 
which are urged against these considerations on 



218 EVOLUTION AND A PEKSOKAL CREATOR. 

strictly scientific grounds. One eminent man lias 
not long since passed away, who, witli the highest 
scientific reputation, was a conspicuous opponent of 
these views. I need not dwell upon the position, 
in this respect, of Professor Agassiz. This com- 
munity will have the opportunity within the next 
fortnight of listening to a full exposition of this 
subject, from one of our most distinguished scho- 
lars and divines, the Rev. Dr. Osgood. But it is a 
significant fact that Professor Agassiz leaves scarce- 
ly any successor, in the higher walks of science, to 
his opinions upon the subject of evolution. The 
apparent inevitableness of the drift of scientific opi- 
nion in the direction of this theory can hardly be 
appreciated by any one who is not familiar with the 
principles of scientific investigation. A discovery, 
which, to men generally, would have little signifi- 
cance, is, to the intellect trained in scientific meth- 
ods, full of suggestiveness as to the plan of nature. 
The unanimity among scientific men, witli which 
these discoveries are regarded as pointing in one 
general direction, and demanding an interpretation 
of nature upon the hypothesis of Evolution, is some- 
thing very remarkable, and should receive the seri- 
ous consideration of at least every educated Chris- 
tian man. It is the solemn duty of the Christian 
world, in view of what may ere long be universally 



EVOLUTION AND A PKRSOXAL CREATOR. 219 

accepted scientific opinions, to give its best thought 
to the discrimination which may be made between 
interpretations of certain portions of the Scriptures 
and the essential facts and truths of the Christian 
faith. 

Professor Agassiz, while opposing the theory of 
evolution, planted himself firmly, in one respect, 
upon a foundation, from which it was impossible 
for him, by any scientific conclusions, to be remov- 
ed. He claimed to recognize everywhere in nature 
the thought of God. Science, within the self-ap- 
pointed limits of the investigation of phenomena, 
and the laws of their sequence, can never disturb 
this position ; for it lies outside of phenomena, and 
is afiirmed by faculties higher than the mere scien- 
tific faculties of the mind. The evolutionist, who 
does not recognize any thing outside of phenomena 
as constituting a part of his philosophical system, 
can take no exception to this, any more than to 
the other hypotheses which we have made. We, 
as theists, have gone with the evolutionist all along 
' through the history of phenomenal being. AYe do 
not venture to say but that all he claims as to the 
order and method of the development of nature 
may be true. We hold him, also, at this point, to 
these admissions ; that there is Absolute Being 
back of all phenomena, and that, in the absence of 



220 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

any possible knowledge of this Being, tlie hypo- 
thesis that it is a personal Being, who has construct- 
ed nature upon a rational plan, the features of 
which we can trace in the phenomenal Universe, is, 
at least, as reasonable as any other. 

But we are now prepared to go further. We 
have kept common ground, so far. !Now we affirm 
that the position of nescience, in regard to Abso- 
lute Being, is untenable, and that there are satis- 
factory and conclusive considerations which should 
carry the mere scientific investigator with us, when 
w^e affirm the truth of the hypotheses which we 
have made. It is in vain to claim that we know 
nothing of Absolute Being. We assert for our- 
selves some knowledge of it w^hen we affirm that it 
exists. If, then, personality is denied to it, that is 
a still further claim to knoAvledge ; for on what pos- 
sible groimd can the absence of personality be af- 
firmed of a Being, of whom nothing is known ? It 
is, however, no more than fair to notice the fact 
that there are certain grounds upon which the per- 
sonality of Absolute Being is denied. But it must 
be remembered that the whole discussion is now 
transferred to the realm of metaphysics, and the 
man of science abandons here the peculiar prestige 
which belongs to him in the scientific field. From 
the moment that he penetrates beyond the mole- 



EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 221 

cnle, where matter vanislies from any test to which 
he can subject it, all through the supposed atom- 
ic constitution of matter, back to Absolute Being, 
he is traveling in the realm of metaphysics. In the 
realm, then, of metaphysics, we would meet this 
affirmation of nescience, in regard to Absolute Be- 
ing, and this consequent scepticism as to its person- 
ality. 

Since there is nothing in mere personality, that is, 
in the conscious possession of intellect and will, which 
is inconsistent with Absolute Being, the grounds for 
its denial must be sought indirectly and outside of 
the mere existence of Absolute Being. It is accor- 
dingly affirmed that the idea of Absolute Being ex- 
cludes all relation, and that therefore we can not 
conceive of the Absolute Being as cause and the 
Universe as effect, or of any idea of Absolute Be- 
ing, and a phenomenal Universe, except the pan- 
theistic idea — which makes God to be all things 
and all things to be God. This position overlooks 
the distinction, which evidently should be made, 
between an Absolute Being, which can not hold any 
relation to a phenomenal Universe and an Absolute 
Being, which, while no such relation necessarily ex- 
ists, can hold it at its will. 

It is conceivable then, that Absolute and Uncon- 
ditioned Being may hold relations at its will. It 



222 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

can conceivably project an object of wliich it is the 
subject. It can make itself the Cause of which the 
Universe is the Effect. Is there, then, a Personal 
Being back of all the phenomena of Nature ? I 
reply, that an affirmative is at least as reason- ' 
able, by the admission of all, as a negative answer, 
and that since a voluntary relativity is conceivable 
in Absolute Being, there are such indications of 
reason and will in nature, as to make it violently 
unreasonable to deny that the rationality of the 
Universe is owing to the will of a rational and con- 
sequently personal Absolute Being. 

A question comes up at this point in the discus- 
sion, which it is important for us to consider. Ab- 
solute Being back of all phenomena is admitted in 
this controversy ; but although much is affirmed on 
one side as well as the other, in regard to it, it is 
claimed that ^4t is something which lies outside of 
the range of our knowledge." This necessarily sug- 
gests the question, what knowledge is possible to us ; 
whether, in other words, it is possible for us to know 
any thing otherwise than by the faculties employed 
in scientific investigation. I can not, of course, en- 
ter here upon the discussion of so great a subject. 
I can only indicate the sure and safe ground which 
the Christian philosopher can take. We need to 
take our stand upon the higher spiritual philosophy. 



evolutio:n" and a peksonal creator. 223 

that of Plato, and Leibnitz, and Kant, and Cole- 
ridge ; affirming the distinction between the reason 
and the understanding, and claiming an intuitional 
power in reason as the basis of onr higher know- 
ledge. I am not insensible to the dangers of the 
transcendental philosophy, but I can not express too 
strongly my sense of the importance of familiarity, 
on the part, especially of Christian ministers, with 
the general principles of the philosophy of the 
great world-teachers to whom I have referred. 
Blaise Pascal has given the highest expression of 
this philosophy, in a wonderful passage, in which 
he says, "Divine things are infinitely above na- 
ture, and God only can place them in the soul. He 
has designed that they should pass, not from the 
head into the heart, but from the heart into the head. 
And so, as it is necessary to know human things in 
order to love them, it is necessary to love divine 
things in order to know them." The great Dante 
also has beautifully and profoundly stated the atti- 
tude of this philosophy in regard to the knowledge 
of God. 

^' Lume e lassii clie yisibile face 
Lo creatore a quella creatura — 
Clie solo in lui vedere lia la sua pace.'* 

" There is above a light which makes visible the 
Creator to that creature who finds his peace only in 
the vision of Him." 



221 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CKEATOK. 

Before closing wliat I liave to say, there are one 
or two points to wliicli I wisli for a moment to refer. 
I have^ in this lecture, placed those who hold the 
doctrine of Evolution, in the position of those w^lio 
are not prepared to take distinctively Theistic 
ground. This I have done, as must have been per- 
ceived, only for the temporary purposes of my ar- 
gument. But having done this, I feel that they 
ought in all fairness to be allowed to speak for 
themselves on this point, and I therefore quote a 
passage from the works of Mr. Darwin, one of the 
most distinguished representatives of this school : 

" There is a grandeur in this view of life, with 
its several powers, having been originally breathed 
by the Creator into a f cav forms or into one ; and 
that, whilst this j)lanet has gone cycling on, accord- 
ing to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a 
beginning, endless forms, most beautiful and most 
wonderful, have been and are being evolved." 

Another point to Avhich I would refer is the 
charge of materialism, which is made very general- 
ly against men of science at the present day. That 
there ar-e some, especially in Germany, who are just- 
ly chargeable with materialism, in the w^orst sense 
of the term, I have no doubt. There are some 
probably in England who are liable to the same 
charge, but I should not include among them the 



EVOLUTIOK AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 225 

recognized leaders of scientilGlc tliouglit. The scten- 
tiiic investigations of the last few years have modi- 
fied the character of materialistic philosophy. All 
scientific men at the present day believe in the ato- 
mic constitution of what we call matter ; bnt so far 
as they know — and the leaders among them unhesi- 
tatingly admit it — the ultimate atoms of matter 
may be only force-centres, and therefore what we 
understand as spiritual entities. I am not insensible 
to the dangerous character of prevalent materialis- 
tic views as to the freedom of the wilb and other 
closely related subjects ; but I do not hesitate to say 
that the materialism of which I have just spoken, 
.that which indissolubly associates life and force 
with what we call matter, and which is as ready to 
express the facts of nature in terms of spirit as of 
matter, is not a dangerous materialism, and is, just 
as much as the idealism of Bishop Berkeley, consis- 
tent with the Christian faith. 

I wish also to say that in whatever concessions I 
may have made to the theory of evolution, I am not 
to be understood as an advocate of any view which 
separates God, at any moment, from the phenome- 
nal universe. The idea of the exercise of creative 
power, at the initiation of each species of life, does 
exclude God, to some degree certainly, from the 
intermediate j)eriods. My view recognizes God as 



226 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CREATOR. 

tlie First Great Cause, and beholds His working 
and immediate agency in every minutest change in 
the phenomenal universe. What is true of man 
is true of all existence : '^ In Him we live and 
move and have our being.'' 

There is one more point to be considered. If 
there is such a process of evolution, what may we 
anticipate as its end ? Is it to go on until there 
are beings as far above man as he is above the 
lower orders of animal life ? In answering these 
questions, we shall be aided by what is a scientific 
conception, and that is, that if the phenomenal 
universe has proceeded from Absolute Being, to 
Absolute Being it will return. But this is just 
w^liat is presented to us in the fundamental facts 
and ]3rinciples of the Christian faith. The tide 
of being which has flowed from God and cul- 
minated at last in man, must return to God. 
This it does in the Incarnation, by which man is 
united to God, and God to man. The circle from 
Absolute Being back to Absolute Being is complete. 
Those who are familiar with nature, and see how 
one thing answers to another, and all things seek 
harmony, and symmetry, and completeness, will re- 
cognize the presence of a universal law in this link- 
ing together of man, as the final result of develop- 
ment, with God, in Christ. Christ then stands as 



EVOLUTION A^D A PEKSOXAL CREATOR. 227 

the highest and final expression of this evolution, 
evolved from the bosom of humanity and yet com- 
ing forth also from the being of God. He is the 
highest expression of which the process is capable. 
It ends with Christ, in God. 

I have now completed the manifestly difficult and 
delicate task assigned me. Every word which I have 
spoken, has been inspired by an earnest desire to 
do what I could to allay apprehensions which 
have been excited by the supposed attitude of Sci- 
ence toward natural and revealed religion. If the 
doctrine of successive and intermitted acts of crea- 
tion should finally be abandoned, it will be replac- 
ed by a far higher conception of God, according to 
which every phenomenal change depends upon 
what is virtually a creative act, and the inconceiv- 
ably vast development of Nature springs forth at 
every point of space and every moment of time, 
from God. The last thing in regard to which any 
fear need be entertained, is the future of the histo- 
rical faith of the Christian Church. 

A poet of our time has represented Christianity 
in the likeness of a majestic angel, with helmet and 
sword, vainly attempting, in the presence of the 
Sphinx, to answer the problem of human destiny. 
The helmet falls from her head, and the sword from 
her hand, and she stands mute and powerless. The 



228 EVOLUTION AND A PERSONAL CEEATOK. 

future, we may rest assured, will reverse the repre- 
sentation. The helmet will rest upon the calm and 
serene brow of the angel ; the sword will be held 
in her invincible hand, and the answer will be given 
which solves the mystery of our being. Science 
has reached a point in its investigations, where it 
Avill become more reverent. The Absolute Being 
which it already recognizes will be seen to be the 
personal Creator and Governor of the Universe. 
The interpretation of Ifature will be more tho- 
rough and clear, and the testimony to the Infinite 
Being, the Moral Governor of the World, will be 
so overwhelming and decisive that there will be a 
universal acknowledgment that — 

*' Eartli witli lier tliousand voices praises God." . 



The foregoing Lecture was, for the most part, un- 
written at the time of its delivery, and it was sug- 
gested to me by some of my friends, for whose opin- 
ions I have the highest regard, that in writing out 
the Lecture for publication, I might have the oppor- 
tunity of modifying certain positions which I had 
assumed, or statements I had made. After very ma- 
ture consideration, I have not felt at liberty to do 
so. It seems to me right that I should reproduce 



evolutio:n and a personal creatok. 229 

tlie Lecture, as far as possible, from phonographic 
reports taken at the time. I am the more content 
to do so, in view of the fact that I can not consci- 
entiously modify any of the views which I have 
expressed. I humbly trust that they may be use- 
ful to the great cause which I have most of all at 
heart. If I am mistaken in any of the grounds 
which I have taken, I am most anxious that it 
should be made clear, at whatever cost to myself, 
and since it is possible that I may have erred in the 
concessions which have seemed to me to be due to 
the scientific conclusions of the present age, I would 
ask, in all humility, if this should be the case, the 
forgiveness of the Great Being, for whose glory I 
have earnestly prayed each word might be spoken. 



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